


When in Rome

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blanket Permission, Europe, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Mythology - Freeform, Road Trips, Season/Series 03, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:00:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 42,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26498293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The demon sent them all the way across the Atlantic,without the fucking car.(Or: Sam, Dean, and the Great European Roadtrip.)
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 12
Kudos: 29





	1. another name for opportunity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mistakes were made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright so _technically_ this should be set in 2008 but I really don't feel like dealing with the 2008 economic collapse so we're just gonna pretend season 3 happened in 2006. Good? Good.
> 
> Also, hi guys! I've been wanting to write this fic for years, but it wasn't until quarantine rolled around that I really got going on it, because; I need a vacation, you need a vacation, everyone needs a vacation, but no one can take one. But you know who _can_? Uh-huh. Anyways, I really hope you guys enjoy. Feel free to leave any sort of comment/criticisms/question you please - I love feedback of any type! And I'm planning on updating every three to five days. Thanks for reading!

_2006_

_Hartville, Wyoming. The United States of America._

*

Hartville is the sort of place they’re always bound to end up, the ones with a singular diner and a run-down gas station, populations of fifty to five hundred. The kind that appear in the middle of nowhere and demand you hit the brakes, because it’s five in the morning and you’re near sleeping at the wheel and you’ve eaten nothing but chunks of month-old vacuum dried pepperoni for the last ten hours. Those kinds of towns. 

If you distilled Sam’s life down to a tally counter, there’d be a lot of moments like this; Dean flipping through the paper, red ink and burger grease staining his fingers, a half-finished salad in front of Sam as he squints to read his laptop, sunlight slicing through the window. Dean’s clicking the pen, over and over, nearly driving Sam to throw him out the window, although that’s nothing new.

What is new is how Sam’s eyes keep flickering to the clock on the wall, a subtle _ticktockticktockticktocktick_ that permeates everything. 

Three months.

Three months and then Dean’s dead, and Sam doesn’t really want to throw him out the window anymore. He picks at a hangnail, studies the coffee stains on the table, tries not to think about how much he'd like to fall asleep and never have to think about these things again. 

Dean circles a second-page headline in big, bright red. “Third death this year,” Dean says, and grabs for his coffee, a trickle of cream sliding down his wrist. He makes a face. “Jesus, is this a milkshake?” Sam just shrugs, rolls his eyes. “I thought you liked it with syrup,” he grins. That’s what Dean gets for forcing Sam to order it. Dean shakes his head, bitching under his breath about devious little brothers.

“Victims?” He says, remembers how when he was in college, his friends would get weirded out by his constant subjects change. Learning to talk sequitur was trial-and-error, because with Dean it was coffee one minute and banshees the next. 

“Anna Smith, age thirty-four, married and a mother of two. Jerry Miller, sixty-seven, widowed. Jenna Dawling, fourteen with an older brother and no mother.” 

“Cause of death?” 

“Anna got nailed in the head by a whiteboard at her new job. Jerry’s body was found in a ditch with a bunch ‘a heart-shaped bullet wounds,” Dean makes a face. “And here-” He points to the headline, _Local Girl Dead in Hartville,_ “-they don’t mention how, but she got a quill jabbed straight through her chest.” 

“Spirit?” 

“Could be, but what’s it following? These people’ve got nothing in common.” 

Dean pauses, taking another drink of his coffee and looking annoyed. "Don't make me say it, Sammy."

Sam grins, wants to reach over and ruffle his hair or condescend in some other way, but he keeps it in check. "Time to hit the library."

*

Libraries make Dean think of cemeteries. If you listen close enough, you can almost hear voices, like the dead still haunt the place from within the confines of leather-bound books. 

It’s creepy. 

But Sam navigates books like they’re his birthright, a gleam in his eyes and an imperceptible smile pulling at the edge of his lips. Days like this, and Dean will wonder, how out of the billions of people in the world, it’s _Sam_ who ended up as his brother. Sam who bitches the entire way from Hartville about _Master of Puppets_ and fucks up his coffee with cream and syrup, who annoys him to death and back on a regular basis, Sam who he sold his soul for and would seventy times over again. 

Dean turns the music up louder, and tells himself to keep his eyes on the road. 

The Platte county library is a beige pentagon decked with a bright red roof, besieged by dusty newspapers. Sam gets that look again, like a kid in a candy store, while Dean passes papers to the librarian that proclaim them out-of-town journalists. 

There's a million little records in here, headlines that read things like _local girl wins thousand-dollar lottery_ and _baseball game canceled due to rain._ Dean spends some time picking through the sports section, before eventually setting out to find the grislier stuff. 

On the drive back to Hartville, Dean rolls down the windows, lets the wind whips his hair and his hands go numb over the wheel. “In-house coffee,” He says, reading the sign of the first motel he sees and deciding to pack it in. Sam rolls his eyes, picks up his duffel and a roll of old newspapers, and goes on to ignore him completely. 

Sometimes Dean feels like Sam is a safe he just can't crack, that he used to have the code but now he's forgotten all the important numbers. 

The motel bed creaks in the middle and someone left the TV on, static white noise. Coffee stains on the night table and the lip of the sink, so Dean thinks _fuck it_ and makes himself one anyways, then makes Sam one just because. He sits down, passing Sam his cup wordlessly and pulling out the paper. 

Anna Smith had a good life, the type you wouldn’t want to throw away. Everyone in her family said she was an angel, the type of woman who brought people together, set up neighborhood potlucks and cooked delicious pies. She had a doctor for a husband, two kids with bright futures, and a Saint Bernand to boot.

Some sonuvabitch spirit took that away from her. 

“You find anything?” 

Sam pauses, chewing on a pen-end. He’s going through the old newspapers, the ones that’ve faded gold with age.

“Yeah. These last three deaths? Not the first bout. This place used to be cowboy town - lots of people setting out to make it on their own out here.” He pauses again, re-reading a headline, flipping back through one of the journals he'd found. “Seems like an inordinate amount of people were dying here back then, too.” 

“So whatever this thing is, it’s been around for at least a century.”

“Seems like it.” 

*

They’re at the same diner, using newspapers instead of placemats this time, and Sam orders a salad instead of a burger. 

People’ve been going missing in Hartville ever since they dug into the soil and found rusty-blood copper. "Lots of cowboys going out in shootouts, mysterious disappearances and then some," Dean says around a mouthful of fries. 

"Dude, gross," Sam says, and Dean rolls his eyes, calls him a bitch and picks up the newspaper again. There's a furrow between his eyebrows, the one he gets when he's concentrating hard enough to break things.

"So I'm seeing a theme here," he spills a fry on the newspaper, licks salt off his fingers before picking it up. "You seeing a theme here?”

Sam puzzles; he shakes his head. 

Dean looks at him oddly, like he somehow expected Sam to know, but talks anyways. “All of these people disappeared mysteriously before they died. Usually, it'd be a few months prior. Here," He pushes a newspaper, a nail over the headline: _Hartville Woman Missing_ , dated three months before Anna Smith disappeared. 

Sam blinks, puts it together. "The gap between their disappearances, was it-"

"- too short to be demons." No reminder of Dean’s numbered days, but no leads either. Good. 

"Does it say where the victims disappeared?"

Dean shakes his head. Sam steals the newspaper he's holding and investigates it. 

"It says the name of the relatives here-"

Dean throws a fry at him. Sam steals his coffee, sips it absentmindedly. It tastes terrible. He looks up, daring Dean to comment. Dean grins, mutters “bitch,” under his breath. 

Sam is simmering-annoyed that he got cut off, but it dies as quickly as it came. He'll get Dean a latte tomorrow, that’ll show him. 

Then they'll stab it in and meet the relatives; the drill runs itself, at this point. 

*

Jenna Dawling lived in a rickshaw house, rusty steel beams with a roof that barely catches rain. "Looks like someone’s dream died here," Dean says before they get into earshot. Sam gives him a look but doesn't protest, so Dean just keeps walking until they get to the doorway, fingering his badge and fixing his smile. Sam meets his eye, nodding ever so slightly. Dean knocks, and hopes the door doesn’t fall in. 

Randall Dawling looks like someone drew him out on a string, a mop of blond hair and crooked teeth affixed to a grungy hoodie and ripped up jeans. There are circles under his eyes and callouses on his fingers. He looks at the two of them, and it's like someone's shot an electrical current up his spine; Dean figures men in suits don't show up at his door much. 

“FBI,” Sam says, with self-conscious, sorry-to-bust-in-the-door, we-swear-we've-got-nothing-but-the-best-intentions smile, the kind that makes women flounder and men lower their guns.

Randall starts, a slight tremble in his hands as he grips the doorknob. "Uh. What?"

"Local police missed some things in the investigation of your sister's death. The case is of interest to our department." 

Randall stares, deer-in-the-headlights, trying to put words together. "What does Jenna - Jenna's - have to do with you guys?" 

_Let's just say I know a thing about what happens when your sibling dies_ is on the tip of Dean’s tongue, but he knows he’s got no right. Sam is here, standing next to him, breathing. Jenna Dawling is dead. 

“We have reason to believe your sister’s death was related to another prominent unresolved case.”

The door creaks. Randall stutters, nods unsteadily, accepts their word as law. “Yeah, uh, come in, you guys want something to drink?”

The Dawling household is a landscape of dilapidation - cracked walls and a leaky ceiling, carpets so dirty they might as well have been the ground outside. Sam and Dean end up on a sagging sofa, and Randall hands them flat cups of Pepsi, sitting down in a chair with a broken leg. 

Grief is one’s of Dean’s oldest friends - he knows what it looks like. There are people who go crazy with it, who can’t process a thing and stare blankly at the window for hours on end, eyes glazed over like zombies. People who won't get out of bed because of the things they’ve seen. People who smash windows and lose their money in rigged card games and throw drinks at the bartender to try to forget.

Randall is none of these types: instead, he's gone paranoid, constantly looking over his shoulder, so tense he might just stab you if you say _hi_ without warning.

Those types are usually the ones that've seen things. 

“We’re so sorry to have to bring this to you, Mr. Dawling. We know you must be going through a lot,” Sam says gently, ignoring his drink. Randall just nods, keeping his eyes on the ground. “But we just need to ask you a few questions, and then we’ll be able to put it to rest. Give you the best closure we can,” Dean watches Sam as he talks here; how his gaze flickers to the ground, how he won’t meet Dean’s eyes. Survivor's guilt. 

Randall nods, fidgets with his mug. “Alright.”

Sam stays silent, picking up his papers and reading the questions. 

“Did your sister ever disappear mysteriously before her death?”

Randall pauses, clearly deciding whether to lie. “Uh, yeah. She did, actually, back in April. Why? Is it related?”

“We think there might be some correlation between the two," Sam deflects. "Where did she go missing?” 

“Near the old mine.” 

Sam tilts his head, catches Dean’s eye. Dean thinks: some ancient spirit throwing a fit, a demon that doesn’t play fair with its deals. 

The next few questions are boring, perfunctory. Jenna Dawling liked school, loved her brother, cooked a mean plate of Kraft mac ‘n cheese. She sticks out, though, just a bit; her mother died a few months before her, and her room is coated in sticky notes. 

Randall lets them into the room but doesn’t come in, a bit too loose in the shoulders as he says, “She was really creative, y’know. Had all these ideas about these books she was gonna write, or something. Never talked about it much, but she’d spend hours on this stuff.” 

Sticky notes cover the wall floor-to-ceiling, things like _Alissa can’t die before she tells the cook about the poisoned food,_ and _Jacob is_ _not_ _the murderer._ Books are piled up in clustering towers on the floor; Sam’s eying a beat of _Romeo and Juliet,_ running his index finger over the spine of what might’ve once been _The Stranger_

Dean looks at the room, wonders what Sam’s room might’ve looked like if they’d ever had a house. He shakes his head, wondering if he’s lost it, and looks to Sam, inclining his head towards the door. Sam nods. They've seen everything they need to see. 

They leave. 

*

He slots the knives into his belt carefully, puts his Glock in its holder, waiting for Dean to slam the Impala’s trunk shut, their usual kickoff signal. It’s recon, probably, but he’s still got salt in his pockets. 

The mine is an agglomeration of brick houses and muddy paths, rusted steel plates left near the door and bits of wood scattered everywhere. Sam jams the button on his flashlight, floods the mine with watery light as they venture further downwards. 

No sulfur, no ectoplasm, just what it says on the tin - an abandoned copperfield. He’s thinking of rolling it in, telling Dean it was a fluke and saying they should go back to popping soda cans and watching TV at their crap motel, but then Dean grabs him, urgency in his eyes. 

“Dude, look,” he says, presses his fingers to a deep groove in the earth. They’re ten feet below ground level and there’s water leaking everywhere, but when Sam touches the indent his fingers are stained yellow.

“Sulfur,” Dean says, and Sam is thinking of tenth-grade chemistry, his teacher talking about _sulfur versus sulfite and sulfate,_ how something can be alike but not the same, and then the ground shakes, a crack of thunder coming from nowhere. The floor feels like it’s coming apart under his feet, like he’s drowning, and for one second Sam is caught up in his thoughts, thinking _can't we ever catch a break-_

There's a woman before him, ethereal and dressed in red, black cloak flowing out behind her, smiling and reaching out her hand, the other figure just out of sight-

_She's not human-_

He looks, and he can’t see Dean - the light is too blinding to see much anything anymore -and he's left with nothing but his thought of _goddamnit_ as he's doused in water. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title: taken from Ralph Waldo Emerson. "America is another name for opportunity. Our whole history appears like a last effort of divine Providence in behalf of the human race.”


	2. to sail in high winds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things go awry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A brief note on languages: I've done my best to accurately represent the level of English proficiency in all of the countries the story will take place in, including the annoyances that come with language barriers. However, for the sake of plot and me not ripping out my hair, please assume that all supernatural creatures can make themselves understood regardless of these language barriers.
> 
> Also, for anyone interested in some of the things mentioned in this fic, I've included notes and (informal) citations in the endnotes. (As you may be able to tell, I am a _bit_ of a nerd.)

_Nafplio, The Peloponnese. Greece._

*

Dean breaks to the surface with a gasp. It's a bright, sunny day, with the clearest skies he's ever laid eyes on. There's a ticking in the back of his mind, an ache in the crook of his neck, the taste of salt on his tongue. He could swear the water's warmer than either the Pacific or the Atlantic has any right to be-

Wyoming is landlocked. 

"Sam!" His brother swims to the surface beside him, looking thankfully unharmed. 

"Dean," he gasps, pushing the hair out of his eyes, "Where the _fuck_ are we?"

Dean glances around; off in the distance, he can see a sliver of land; sun-baked rocks and tall cliffs. "Well," he says, grinning despite himself, "I'm pretty sure we're not in Kansas anymore." 

Sam might’ve laughed at that one, probably rolled his eyes. Dean doesn’t know, because by the time he looks back his brother's already heading off to the shore. 

*

Even Sam, disjointed as all Hell and feeling six continents off-kilter, can see that the beach is beautiful, pure white rock glinting against the shimmering blue sea. A myriad of vegetation crawls out from the cracks, branching pines and gold-and-pink flowers casting shadows on the path. 

…Last time Sam checked, it was _night._

Later, he tells himself, putting his energy towards grappling to the shore. A foot-high ledge looms in front of them, a trail perched above it. Sam does his best to dry his fingers on the rock, and starts looking for fissures. 

He pulls himself up fairly easily, gets his footing and then turns to check on Dean. He's doing fine: Sam doesn’t offer him a hand. He knows he’ll get refused. 

He pulls off his shirt, wringing it out the best he can and glancing about. There’s no one for miles: if he had to guess it’s six or seven in the morning. 

Dean pulls up next to him, wiping the chalky dust off his hands. He looks around, like he’s taking in the view. Something meows, and Sam jumps a little: a cat is perched in a cactus, looking down on them like peasants. Sam averts his gaze, fidgeting. The cat’s black; he knows enough about bad omens. 

There's a burning sensation in his wrist, more than just the usual ache that comes with climbing. He glances down to see a thick band of starbursts painted just about his skin, a vivid dark blue stain. He flexes his hand, and pain sparks up his arm. 

_Fantastic_ , he thinks, wracking his brains for any clue as to what could've caused it. 

A few steps in whichever direction, and Dean wrings his shirt, checks his pockets. “So,” he says, “Any clue what the fuck just happened?”

*

Sam runs a hand through his hair, chewing on his words. Walks over to the nearest ledge and pulls his shoes off, unlaces them. 

He rips a stick from the ground and starts scratching the dirt. 

“Some kind of teleportation,” he starts with, and Dean figured but he’s still really, really not happy about it. "It's morning, and where we were it was night, so we're dealing with a pretty big change in timezones - we're definitively on a different continent," he says. "Based on the season, we’re in the Northern Hemisphere. Temperate area, not near the equator or the Arctic Circle. Can't be Russia or Canada, the sea's not warm enough-" He waves a hand, "And this isn't any part of the States that I recognize. Could be Japan, but by the looks of it, I’m thinking-” He pauses. “-Somewhere in Europe, or maybe Turkey. It kinda looks like Greece.” 

"Greece?" 

"You know, the blue sea, white rocks and stuff," Sam mumbles, staring intently at his stick, lost in thought. He sighs, in that annoying girly that he always does, and starts organizing the contents of his pockets. 

Whatever it was, it wasn’t interested in their stuff. Dean's still got his wallet, although the bills are soggy and his phone's fucked beyond repair. There’s the keys to the Impala (thank god), a butcher knife, and a Glock that leaks water instead of firing bullets. He frowns at it and starts taking it apart while Sam talks. 

All in all, they’ve got; maybe three hundred and fifty bucks cash, three possibly-working credit cards under false names, Dean’s fake FBI badge, four knives, two guns, and a soaked through pack of peanut M&Ms. 

Sam considers, frowning, and nods. “Well,” he says, “We’ve done more with less,” and Dean has this sudden memory of being seventeen and camping, Dad declaring that they’d be spending three weeks there with nothing but a pocket knife and slyness, ‘cause John Winchester didn’t raise no idiots for sons. They got through that. This should be no sweat, he tells himself. 

They’re in the middle of a dusty path, a cliff on one side and the sea on the other, surrounded. Dean kicks a rock and it flys into the sea, flays the water with ripples. 

*

Sam can’t stop thinking, can’t stop his hands from trembling and his thoughts from jumping as he tries to put them together. What just happened - there’s no explanation. Short of deities, no creature can transport its victim like that - just _snap._

And why? There’s no sense to it. Maybe it’s a cog in the machine, a subsidiary, waiting to send them to the big bad across the sea. But they haven’t met anything yet. Not to mention the marks on Sam's wrist - and now that he looks at it, Dean's got them too, which can't be good news. 

He frowns, turns to Dean and hits him as hard as he can. “Dude, what that fuck?” He says, eying Sam suspiciously, brushing the place on his arm that’ll be bruised tomorrow morning. He shoots Sam a vicious glare. 

“Could be that we’re in a simulation, an induced hallucination of some sort. Or rather, could be that _I_ am, and you’re a subproduct of my imagination.” 

Dean raises his eyebrows, “The whole world really does revolve around you, Sammy,” he says, sardonic. 

Sam takes the bait. “Hey! It could be true!” Then he hits Dean again. 

“You are such a bitch.”

Sam grins. 

Dean pulls out the pack of M&Ms, a mesh of colors smearing on his palm. “Want one?” He throws one at Sam before Sam can respond, grins with all his teeth. Sam catches the candy on instinct, crushing it in his hand. 

“Seriously, though, why would a monster teleport us like that? It doesn’t make sense. “‘S pointless,” he says, trying to discreetly lick the chocolate off of his palm. 

Dean frowns. “Yeah, who knows? They could be in it for the long run or something. Try to throw us off our game.” Sam doesn't mention that right now there _is_ no long run, just a three-month sprint and a fast ending, for both of them. 

He grabs Dean's hand instead, rolling his eyes when Dean tries to jerk away. "Look at this," he says, tracing a finger over the marks. Dean's involuntary wristband looks more to be made up of sunbursts, a shade lighter than Sam's. "Does yours hurt?" 

Dean jerks his hand away. "Yes, motherfucker, it hurts. Jesus," He says. "Maybe they're trying to make us do something, and these things are like - keeping track. Or they're warning other monsters that we're their territory or some shit." He makes a face, and Sam can't help but agree. He touches his own mark again, hoping for something to happen, but it stays entirely stagnant. 

"I saw a woman before we woke up here," He says, trying to piece it together. "She was dressed in red and black, looked sort of like a demon. She had her hand outstretched, like this-" He gestures, "Like she was about to make a deal. I could tell she wasn't human." He turns to Dean. "Did you see anything?"

Dean pauses, thinking. "I saw an angel." 

"...You know what they say about atheists in foxholes." Sam grins, smarmy. 

Dean swipes at him. "Not like that, asshole. Although," He tilts his head, "She _was_ pretty hot. But she seemed mad or something, walking with purpose with her hand outstretched. Like she was about to make a deal." He turns to Sam. "That probably means something, doesn't it," He says, resigned. Sam resists the urge to sigh. "Yeah."

"Maybe we got sent here on a bet between the demon-chick and angel-chick?"

"Could be. But where do these things-" he raises his wrist "-Fit in?"

Dean shugs. "Hell if I know, man. They could be tally scores of some sort." Dean wrinkles his nose. "Like they're watching us." It's a good point, although the thought is deeply unappealing. 

Sam resolves to figure out later, and goes to grab another M&M. A bleached yellow-and-white arch curves over the stone path they’re walking on, dark green cacti growing around it. A handful of cactus pears lie on the floor, sticky juice tacked in the patterns of cat paws. 

It’s so picturesque it’s suspicious. 

“Not much we can do right now, really,” He resolves, trying to turn his mind to the practicalities. They’re in a foreign country of some sort with little-to-no money and huge likelihood of not speaking the language. They’ve got enough on their plate without supernatural interference, but when has that ever stopped anything, ever. 

The path’s getting more well-maintained, carved up with little houses-on-stilts embedded into the cliffside. Pictures and Byzantine-like iconography fill the insides, crosses atop the tops of the roof. He runs his fingers over the inscription.

That alphabet brings back hours spent pouring over etymology books, trying to put together grammatical concepts, understand the origins of demon exorcisms. Most of the words are unfamiliar, but he knows the meaning of _Anapáfsou en eiríni_ far too well. 

He stands back, and rereads it, just to be sure. 

“We’re in Greece.” He says, purses his lips. One mystery down, another seven hundred to go. 

*

The strangely-in-English sign declares that they’re in Nafplio. Dean remembers hearing that name a few times, when Sam used to talk about Greek monsters while looking for info on a hunt. Some half-sized town where a lot of fishermen came from, bringing their myths and legends and monsters alongside them. 

They hit an abandoned beach house, and the path goes from gravel to concrete. Dean sides-eyes the building. He’s got no trust of abandoned buildings. Like, zero. 

The beach itself, though, looking pretty fucking sweet. If they weren’t already drenched and not in possession of any beachwear whatsoever, Dean might’ve been tempted to poke Sam into going swimming. Sam’s so caught up in his angst fest that Dean’s pretty sure he doesn’t even notice their surroundings - the towering mountains in the background, the strange yellow payphone with a clipped door, and the honest-to-god seventeen cats Dean has spotted since they got here. It's kind of amazing, really. Dean never thought that there was anything all that interesting going on outside of America, but he's starting to rethink that stance a bit. 

They're not here to be tourists, though.

He looks at his brother, and tries not to sigh. “Sam, seriously, I know you like to fictionalize life and shit, but I kind of need you with me right now,” Dean says, kind of tempted to ruffle his hair, draw him out of his stupor.

Sam blinks, snapping his gaze to Dean. “What?”

“We can’t really do much about the monsters right now. I mean, the only thing we’ve got is this,” He gestures to his gleaming wet Glock. “We don’t even have table salt, man. What are we gonna do if something shows up? Yell at it?” 

Sam blinks. “And we need currency and clothes and to see if our cards still work, and then we need cash and probably a hotel.” Glancing at the keys dangling from Dean’s fingers, he amends, “And a ride,” although there’s a hole in Dean’s chest at the thought of getting behind the wheel of any car but the Impala. 

Sam starts in on the age-old technique of trying to dry soggy bills with friction, trying to keep them from getting too crumpled. 

He’s impressed with Sam’s logistics. When they were kids, Sam was complete shit with practicalities, always asking _why can't we go to the Hilton?_ Or _Can we please please please have that big cake from the bakery for my birthday?_

He kind of wants to say something - doesn’t know whether it’ll be in regret or amazement - when it hits him once again that Sam's changed, that in those four years his little brother grew up. 

*

The guy at the currency exchange counter is yelling at him, and Sam's got a headache to rival none other. 

“Look, dude,” He says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Just - whatever, take the three-fifty and we’ll go with two hundred euros. Christ,” he vaguely wonders if this guy is some sort of low-level demon. He’s been yelling at them about exchange rates for the past two hours, babbling in some half-Greek half-English mix about what Sam _thinks_ is the imminent collapse of the Greek economy.

Dean is, of course, passed out on a comfy-looking armchair, because Dean believes that all who are not immediately charmed by his presence are not worthy of his time. Or so he says. Sam thinks he has jet lag. 

He sighs, grabs the euros from the guy at the counter, stuffs them in his wallet, and strides towards his brother, snapping his fingers in front of Dean's eyes. Dean blinks groggily, gives him the type of grin that means he thinks he's gotten away with something. "How'd it go?"

"I hate you," Sam says, and keeps the euros for himself. 

“We’re gonna need to pick up some more cash, or check some credit cards. You think they take Visa here?” 

Dean shrugs, "Who knows," he says, and they'll do that later, rig scams and learn how to play European card games and slip a wallet while people stand in crowds at the market.

For now, though they just buy three two kilogram bags of salt, as well as gloves and bulky leather jackets, because if Sam remembers one thing from his World Studies class it's that Europeans aren't big on open carry. 

He's actually hungry for once, so he grabs a snack from one of the merchants yelling near the seashore, the strange tangling streets making him dizzy. "Halva," the man tells him, and when Sam asks him what that is, he just nods and repeats, "Halva." Sam buys it anyways. It's sweet and thick and kind of crunchy, and he passes it off to Dean without a second thought. 

"Dude, this shit is _good,_ " he says, licking the crumbs off of his fingers. Sam rolls his eyes, looks away. 

They pull into the first hotel they see, a thirty-bucks-a-night five-story building with a fading sign with something that might’ve once been _villa_ inscribed on it. 

"Two queens," he tells the woman behind the desktop, and she shakes her head, looking as though she needs clarification. "Two queen-sized beds," he repeats, trying to remember the Greek word for _bed_ and coming up empty. 

"Two beds? We don't have that," she replies, glances between him and Dean and purses her lips. "Two rooms?" 

Sam's got a hundred euros left and no time for this. "No, that's fine," he says, smiling glumly. "Thanks," he says, taking the key and resisting the urge to punch a wall. 

*

"So," Dean says when Sam steps out of the shower, hair dripping wet and a frown on his face, "You get the floor. Bueno?" 

Sam looks like he might just commit fratricide, crush his windpipe right then and there. "Is that really your biggest concern right now?" 

Dean tilts his head, bites his lip, pretends to think about it. "Yes," he says, wondering if he should play the _dying in three months_ card or if that'd be laying it on too thick. 

Sam sighs, whatever, will probably give it to him implicitly, this thing he's been doing for the last nine months, _no, here, you have it._ It kind of terrifies Dean. He has no clue how to deal with a Sam who knows what he's doing, who thinks he has to catch Dean when he falls. 

He looks out the window; the hotel’s less tacky and more expensive than most of the places they’re been to, just plain clean walls and a Juliet balcony overlooking the cramped streets below. It'd be nice, if it actually had two beds. 

"You are such an idiot," Sam says, like he believes it. Dean’s always wondered if he does. He grins although it feels askew, says, "Takes one to know one". 

Sam shakes his head. “Nevermind, I’ll take the floor,” He says, and Dean wants to protest, tell Sam _you really don’t need to keep doing that,_ but Sam’s a martyr if there ever was one. There’s no point. 

“Go grab us dinner,” He says, like he’s putting together a puzzle, trying to think his way out of this problem. “I’m gonna try to book us a plane back.” And Dean would bitch, but really, he’ll take a plane if that’s what it takes to get home, though Sam will probably laugh and him the whole way.

*

Sam looks up from the library computer, and announces, “We’re cursed.” A woman walking by side eyes him. 

He can’t book a plane. He pulls aside a guy he’s been talking to in broken English about sports statistics (Dean drilled this type of stuff into his head when he was young: know the lowest common denominator; you can always make small talk that way), and asks him to click the button for him, and still nothing. It’s not even _his_ credit card. 

So he tries at another library, with a different computer model and a different card. He even calls in a few times - either the line cuts out only to be restored as soon as he hangs up, or, in one case, the attendant talking to him suffers cardiac arrest. 

He wants to hit his head on the table. He tries different credit cards, different strangers, different phones and different numbers, different companies. He tries to book a ferry back to the States, inquires about driving across the Bering Strait - but no such luck. 

He’s at the end of his rope when he tries to book something to Italy, and his heart jumps when it goes through. The credit card’s near its max, but he tries again to get an adjoining one to the States, but the webpage goes blank and crashes. 

“Fuck,” He says, resisting the urge to smash the computer. 

So whatever it is, it wants them in Europe. 

Great. Just great. 

*

Twenty minutes into his promenade and Dean is seriously considering ditching the jacket. So many tourists have given him the side-eye, it’s like being back in the suburbs. 

The streets are nothing like America: narrow and twisting, people setting out jewelry and sweets for sale, grooves of trees overhanging on these weird-entirely-pedestrian walkways. He’s trying to find a Coke or a Kit-Kat or some goddamned fries, but eventually, he just has to give up and settle for Greek salad to-go and a warmed-up box of something called _spanakopita,_ which he can’t pronounce but looks greasy enough to piss Sam off. 

He navigates the streets easily, ( _you got a mind like a map, son, you keep that up and you’ll never get lost,_ Dad used to tell him, a proud smile on his face), and only makes one wrong turn. 

There’s a booth at the end of the street, a total dead-end corner with not a soul in sight. _But_ the booth has _halva,_ these sugary-almond blocks that are like tasty chalk, and he’s seriously considering spending the last twenty dollars of their second-to-last credit card on it when he hears voices. 

“No, Enyo, it’s _my_ turn! Give it!” Say someone who sounds like they’ve got a singular tooth in the whole of their mouth, and then another voice.

“No, Deino, you’ve already gotten it for the six ‘ours today! Gimme!” 

“Shut it, you bickering morons, look, we have got to, it is completely- where _is_ it?”

A trio of old women dressed entirely in grey pass him by, wearing the shiniest dentures and the bombest sunglasses he’s ever seen. They’re leaning on each other, moving wearily, two of them with those canes blind people use. 

An orb rolls by, pools at his feet. He kneels down to pick it up, and it blinks at him.

An eye. These old blind ladies are chasing after an eye. 

He figured there was weird crap in every corner of the world - impossible to avoid it, really - but this is definitively out of his pay grade. 

The women seem to be ambling in the eye's direction, though, so he peels out a glove from his pocket and picks it up. 

“You guys lookin’ for this?” They turn to him simultaneously, like puppets on strings. “The eye!” Says one, the tallest, and then the middle one shushes her - “We mean, uh, hi!”

“Do you guys want to tell me your game or do you want me to crush this thing?” He says, and they snap to attention. He grins. Blackmail is fun, although he keeps a hand on his gun. 

“Don’t-” Starts the middle one, before the taller one speaks up. “No, no, he knows better than to terminate a point of leverage. He is a hero, see?” 

“A ‘ero?” Exclaims the shorter one. “We ‘aven’t ‘ad one of those in centuries!” 

“Damned heroes,” Grumbles the middle one, “Always pull the same tricks.” Then she speaks up, “What do you want, hero?”

“-Hunter,” Dean corrects, and she swats at empty air. The tallest one: “The newfangled names that youngsters come up with! Come on, just get on with it. We are quite busy these days, you know,” She says, tapping the rim of her sunglasses so that they slip down just a bit, and Dean realizes -

“Where are your _eyes_?” 

“Gee, ‘e’s not the brightest matchstick, now is ‘e,” The shortest grumbles. “What type of ‘ero are you, whachamacallit?”

“James Pulleyblank,” He says immediately, the first name that comes to mind, “And again: hunter.” 

“I suppose these ‘hunters’ are not the sharpest knives in the shed,” Says the tallest. 

“‘E’s brave, though,” The smallest one says, “You see ‘is soul, rit?” 

“Cleaner than your laundry, Enyo,” Snarks the middle one, and for a second they almost seem _human,_ and Dean is creeped the fuck out because that sounds exactly like something Sam would tell him. Bitch. 

“But it’s a time bomb,” says the shortest, and they nod simultaneously. 

He shakes his head, closes his hand around the pale grey eye. “What are you guys _saying_?”

“Idiot,” Sighs the shortest - Enyo - “‘E’s got a whole quest but no idea why ‘e’s _doing_ it! What type a ‘ero does that? 'E's got those marks - I only seen one type 'a creature in my life who leaves _those_ type'a marks! Ain't he ever in for trouble. Wonder what she wants from 'im.”

“She was a strange one,” Says the tallest. “Wonder what she thinks she can get from him. Her usual type are a bit less...damaged." They're talking in a way that makes Dean think he'd be offended if he had any clue what the fuck they were talking about. "Although it seems as though we're missing something. Jhudiel isn't the betting type, now is she?"

"Not usually, I don't think so." 

He clamps a fist around the eye, and they all stand up suddenly. The shortest is trembling a bit. “Alright, this has been fun and all, but riddle me this; if you hags know so much about my soul and journey and life story and shit, tell why the _fuck_ I am here. Or-” He says, touches the eyeball, gooey and sticky even through the glove, as poppable as a grape. “-you know the drill."

“I can’t wait for bionic eyes,” mutters Enyo. “Damned ‘eros only know one trick.”

The tallest one - Deino, he’s pretty sure - is the one who actually tells him, intoning gravely; "You have been sent here to fulfill your destiny, hero, in one of two ways. There are forces that would wish to see you falter and betray, and another that would wish to see you break away and free yourself. The marks on your wrist are betting marks, to show you which side you are approaching-" Dean wonders what on earth any of this means, and is about to ask when Enyo steps forwards. 

“Ay, I’m sick of this shit. Goddamned ‘eros,” She says, cutting her sister off and hitting Dean over the head with a cane.

*

Dean comes back looking like he’s been hit over the head with a cane, greasy paper bag clutched between his fingers and a woozy look in his eyes. It’s near night, and Sam exhales a soft sigh of relief; he’d been about to tear up the city streets to find him. 

“Dude,” He says, contemplates leaving the bed. “What the hell happened?” He’s spent the last three hours flicking between TV, trying to pick up pieces of Greek while repressing a mounting sense of worry. 

Dean shrugs, “Got knocked over the head by three immortal ladies with only one eye between them.”

Sam pauses, digests, listening to the TV telling him about the _kalýteres thalássies políseis stin katagegramméni istoría._ “Oh,” he says, surprised but not really - they’re Winchesters, even a nine-hour time change won’t stop them from stumbling into shit like this. He thinks back to those days spent pouring over Greek mythology books. “I think I read about those once.”

“Yeah, well, fat lotta good it did me,” Dean grumbles, throws Sam something that looks like flaky spinach pie. Sam grabs it, eyes it suspiciously. “Give me the salad, man,” he says, and Dean forks it over reluctantly, probably just to piss him off. Jerk. 

“Did you get their eye?” Dean chews on the pie, considering. “Yeah." Then he starts, looking at the pie as if affronted, “This is fucking fantastic. What the _hell._ ” 

“What did they tell you, then?”

“Tell me?”

“You know, like, when Perseus got their eye,” Sam says, information coming back to him, summers spent in dusty rooms, “They told him where the Gorgons' lair was. Did they tell you anything, mildly useful?”

“I asked them why we were here and they told me some crap about destiny and shit. That there were people betting for me to - what was it 'falter and betray' or 'break away and free myself'."

"Those are probably the women we saw in our visions." 

"-And they mentioned a name. Jhudiel," he says, and Sam tilts his head. "Feel like I've heard it before, nothing's coming up. We'll have to check when we have a computer. They say anything else?"

"Something about our marks being tallies." He rolls his eyes. "And then they went on about destiny and fate and stuff."

Sam considers, lets the TV buzz wash over him. Dean takes the remote, flips the channels until he comes across sports - soccer, blue vs. red. "You think some things are inevitable?"

Dean pauses, then shrugs. "Who knows," he says, looking at the TV. Sam doesn't say anything. 

“I think we should get a move on, dude,” Dean says after what might be an hour. “Greece is crawling with mythological shit like that,” And he’s right, of course, but Sam doesn’t really see it as a logical decision, just a reaction - Dean is Dean is Dean, incapable of existing in one place for more than a week at a time, like his continued presence causes the universe to invert itself. 

But he’s got a point, and - 

“We can’t get back to the States from here. Something’s blocking me from booking a direct flight back. We could try in some other country, maybe it’d work there,” He says, not really believing it but feeling it’s worth a shot - what the hell else’ve they to do, anyways. 

"Yeah, maybe we'll get some more vague advice on why were mysteriously teleported half across the world," Dean says, that sly grin on his face, and Sam almost kind of feels alright, feels like laughing but he doesn’t think it’s a joke, not really, Dean may but he doesn’t. They _are_ here for a reason, and the best they can hope is that it’s not to be sacrificial lambs or bad entertainment. 

“Yeah,” he says, grins back even though he doesn’t really feel it, “Find it at the end of a bottle, maybe,” Sam says, and Dean says, “That’s my boy." 

"Jhudiel might be one of those girls we saw, back before we got there. But there's no way to be sure. Besides," Sam says, puzzling, "I remember Jhudiel being a guy, in angle lore."

"Guess we'll just have to bump around in the dark until we hit something," Dean says, grinning a bit. 

"Like we usually do," Sam adds, and Dean laughs. They don’t talk after that, hitting the hay after a strong contender for the weirdest day in Sam's life. 

Sam wakes up with the glorious gloating feeling that Dean didn’t kick him off the bed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is taken from Aristotle Onassis. "We must free ourselves of the hope that the sea will ever rest. We must learn to sail in high winds."
> 
> Wyoming and Athens have a 9-hour time difference between them. (All of Greece operates in the same time zone).
> 
> I pictured Sam and Dean ending up near the [Nafplio Promenade/Walkway](https://www.tripadvisor.ca/Attraction_Review-g319780-d524269-Reviews-Nauplion_Promenade-Nafplio_Argolis_Region_Peloponnese.html#REVIEWS). If you walk far enough the path turns to dirt, and you can see some absolutely lovely sunsets. 
> 
> The Peloponnese is dotted with little '[roadside shrines](https://www.amusingplanet.com/2019/03/the-roadside-shrines-of-greece.html)' dedicated to lost loved ones. Usually, these shrines are decorated with religious icons, pictures, and sometimes have words inscribed on them. 
> 
> _Anapáfsou en eiríni_ \- Rest in peace [Greek] {Transliteration}
> 
> English proficiency is very high in Greece. I only met one man on my entire trip who couldn't hold a basic conversation. 
> 
> Cats are _everywhere_ in Greece. The passage about cats hanging out in cactus trees is not made up - one time I spotted three in one tree. 
> 
> Greece formally adopted the euro in 2001. A euro was worth a bit more than $1.25 US in the summer of 2006, so Sam and Dean are indeed getting ripped off. 
> 
> European guns laws are [ generally stricter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_of_gun_laws_by_nation#Europe) than American ones. Open carry is not very common outside of the United States, where personal defense guns are usually issued on a may-issue or will-not-issue basis. Although it should be mentioned that law varies from state to state, and open carry is not permitted in some of them anyways. 
> 
> The cheapest hotel I could find on Tripadvisor was around $50 CAD, so factoring in inflation and the absolute shittiness of the Canadian dollar, I figured thirty was about right. 
> 
> European hotels aren’t like American ones: the beds are smaller, the spaces are tighter, and you can rarely get a second bed without upping the price by at least twenty-five dollars or so. 
> 
> The Graeae are Greek mythological figures, three sisters called Enyo, Deino, and Pemphredo who share one eye and one tooth between them. In ancient myths, Perseus got information out of them by ransoming their eye. 
> 
> _Kalýteres thalássies políseis stin katagegramméni istoría_ \- Best marine sales in recorded history [Greek] {Transliteration}. 2006 was a good year for Greece in marine sales. 
> 
> _Halva_ is a sweet found frequently in Greece, usually made from semolina and nuts. 
> 
> _Spanakopita_ is a spinach-and-feta-cheese pie made by encasing the ingredients in phyllo and baking in the oven. A recipe can be found [here](https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/spanakopita-spinach-triangles-or-pie-recipe-1969774).
> 
> *
> 
> As always, feedback is appreciated, and thanks for reading!


	3. what strange things there may be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Literal, actual vampires.

_Sibiu, Transylvania. Romania._

*

Sam’s the one who knows how to carjack, which has never failed to annoy Dean. Dad always said: _if nothing else, a man’s gotta have his own car,_ and Dean lives by those words, bought it nickel and dime. Sam didn’t care for that, and Dean would be very pissed about it if that very skill hadn’t come in handy on at least four separate occasions. 

Alright: he’s lying. Dean knows how to jack a car, but he hates it. It means he’s not in the Impala, and that means something isn’t right with the world.

But Sam steals things like it’s his birthright, and sometimes Dean is amazed that his righteous _, I just want to be normal Dean goddamnit_ brother is so great at crime. He thinks that, in another lifetime, they could’ve been the best bank robbers in history, a literal Bonnie and Clyde. 

They steal a Fiat, covering up their guns in the trunk and keep everything else up front. 

“So,” He asks Sam, turning his wrist over the wheel and revs the engine. 

“Where're we headin’?”

*

Sam picks up a map in the grocery store, a black-white-and-faded-blue thing that traces roads across continental Europe like veins. He chews on his lip, running over the options. 

“West is the obvious choice,” He says first, thinking of that ferry to Italy and the sun shining in his eyes, the wind whipping towards America. Heading East means going up through Russia, which means five-thousand miles of freezing cold snow and Dean almost definitely getting them sent to prison for insulting Lenin, Stalin, and Putin, to top it off. 

“We could…” He starts, trying to think. Those ladies told Dean that they were here on some sort of bet, that the marks were meant to show them where to go, to keep track of things. 

He glances down. The edges of his wrist are cleared of starbursts, one or two less than he had yesterday. "Well," he says. "Looks like we're on a schedule." He wonders what it means. From what Dean's heard, they're supposed to be either betraying or fleeing something, although he doesn't know what it might be. The whole thing just leads round and round in circles, and Sam wishes he had a laptop, a book, anything that would help him make sense of it.

If Dean interacting with the Graeae means anything, it's probably that the things that sent them here have put them in the place of heroes of some sort, that they're trying to put them on a quest, challenge them. Quest, noun: a grand search or pursuit made in order to find or obtain something. 

Dean's right; they really are just fumbling around in the dark, hoping to hit something useful. 

"Fuck it," Sam says. "Let's head up through the Balkans and kill whatever we find." Because what the hell, that's a challenge. 

*

The freeway is the freeway wherever you go, although Eastern Europeans are some of the most insane drivers Dean's ever seen, and he's been in LA traffic. Sam's in the passenger seat, twisting the map around, trying to navigate the whole of the continent, completely ignorant of all this, of course, trying to figure out if it's possible to get to Romania within a fortnight.

They fly by Corinth, wide berths of sea and hilly mountains. The air goes frigid for a while, and Dean could almost swear he sees _snow,_ which he’s pretty sure is not supposed to happen. 

Sam is fidgeting, restlesly tracing out things on the map, and Dean thinks they’ll need to grab a laptop soon, a laptop and spare cash and a concrete idea of _what the hell they're doing here_. As it is, he looks out the window and keeps his foot on the gas.

The sunburst of his wrists flare up as they pass by Athens, and endless sea of suburbia, signs and posters in Greek and English everywhere, transliterated and translated and lit up with neon. Dean grabs another one of those spinach pies, a whole plate, yes ma’am, and Sam grabs another one of his crappy salads. Dean buys him this weird cheese-honey puff pastry, which he knows Sam will hate, and ends up eating it fast enough to buy seconds before they leave. 

His wrist is still hurting when they leave Greece, but he ignores it. 

*

They get lost so many times it’s not even funny. At Thessaloniki, Sam finally gives it up, chucks the map in the backseat and tells Dean they’re finding a laptop store, come hell or high water or the end of the world. Dean looks at him like he’s nuts, but he doesn’t get it: if they’re no out within three months Dean is gonna _die_ here, no ifs ands or buts, and Sam doesn’t know if he’ll be able to drag himself back to America without just dropping off in the sea and letting himself drown. All their resources are back in the States, meager as they may be; Sam can picture Ruby, wondering what the fuck happened, trying to chase them down. Bobby, too, although he shivers at the thought of involving him with this mess of a situation that they're in. 

As they are, they’re helpless, no books no armor no nothing, just two bags of salt and a partly-waterlogged gun and strange marks on their wrists that _burn_ like motherfucking hell, just low-level enough to not need to go to the hospital.

Sam needs a goddamned laptop, needs to research that name, the only lead they have, put it into perspective, get the lay of the land. He’s so off-kilter it’s not even funny, can barely see straight.

Dean must see it, must get it somehow, because he pulls up to the first computer store they see. It's the closest thing to big-box Sam’s seen since they arrived, a high-roofed mall with a food court front-and-center, a far cry from the panoramic views of the seaside and arching Byzantine architecture.

Sam learned to steal around the time he learned how to read. Some notes: it’s easier with a partner, harder with cameras. Dean slots his gun into his jacket, and Sam does the Sam, thinking, _what the hell, nothing wrong with adding another country to our criminal record,_ and that part of him that dreamed of apple pies and white picket fences cringes and slinks away.

They play their usual con: distraction and robber. Dean’s almost always the distraction: people just tend to migrate towards him, like moths to a flame. He’s the one who looks like trouble, who shopkeepers will train a watchful eye on. He’ll chat up the girl behind the desk or piss off the guy arranging the stuff, do his best to make a scene. 

Sam comes in five to ten minutes later, a normal guy, unsmiling. Checks the stuff for tags, keep track of the machines they have that tell if you’re taking something without removing them. Discreetly pick one of the cheaper things out; he catches Dean’s eye, nods slightly, tilts his lips. Then Dean’s on the attendant nearby, with the type of charm that breaks language barriers, that sort of flirtatious smile he’s got that gets him girls like _that._

Sam pretends to be interested, runs diagnostics on its internet, checks the speed and memory capacity. He shuts the laptop, heading over to the bag section to grab a sleek black carrier, puts the laptop inside and pretends to observe how it looks in the mirror. Twenty steps and he’s almost out; time for the pièce de resistance, the one they play when they want zero chance of getting caught. 

The machines that detect the tags are about a foot in from the door: decent enough slot. He kicks an empty DVD case in front of them, strides awkwardly, aim his throw, and falls. The laptop slides past the machine undetected, and Sam pretends to have fallen harder than he did. 

Dean’s over there within a minute: that look on his face that strangers get when they see bad things happen to other strangers. “Woah, dude, you okay- uh, I mean, _óla kalá_?”

Sam laughs, pretends it’s all a coincidence. “You American?” 

Dean blinks, surprised, “Uh, yeah, actually.” 

“Nice country, ain’t it?” 

“Would have to say so myself."

It’s in moments like these that Same finds himself strangely lucid, wondering what this picture might’ve looked like if it’d been _real;_ if Sam and Dean really _had_ been strangers, if they were the type of people who went on vacations and bought computers instead of stealing them. 

Dean shakes his head, like he’s coming out of some realization, slight confusion in his expression, different from usual. 

Then he grins, that same charming one he gives girls like free candy, and offers Sam a hand. “You want me to grab that bag for you?” All charisma, and Sam nods, pretends like he’s been thunderstruck, wipes the dirt from his palms and straightens out his jeans. He walks past the scanners, no problem, and picks up his banged-up new laptop from the ground, gives Dean a nod. “Thanks, man,” He says, and Dean grins. “No problem. Us countrymen gotta stick together,”

Then he’s off, like a stranger would be, back out to flirt with a girl, give the staff a story, _whaddya know, that kid over there’s from the same town I grew up in,_ or _he likes the same movies,_ or _I saw him at a concert back in ‘04 and we had a great talk, hadn’t seen him since, what a coincidence?_ And people buy it, because they want to, because they like to believe that life is full of little miracles like that. 

Sam stands outside, looking blankly at the coins tossed into the fountain, his reflection frowning back at him. He checks around before scooping up a few euros, thinking _that’s dinner,_ kind of wanting to laugh. 

Dean comes out fifteen minutes later, a phone number scrawled on his wrist, and Sam rolls his eyes, wonders at how Dean can make people like him but never love him, somehow. 

"We good?" He asks, and Sam runs through the statistics, he's got a 500 milibyte memory laptop with decent RAM and the slimmest hope in hell of figuring any of this out. 

He doesn't say any of it, just raises an eyebrow. "You sure you ain't getting any more of that spinach pie? Just in case. We are leaving the country, and you never know," and Dean just _looks_ at him.

Then he goes in and buys more of that pie. 

*

They leave Greece in a whirlwind, Thessaloniki to Macedonia, stopping at a café in Vinica halfway through the afternoon.

If Dean hadn't already seen enough crazy shit to fuel at least seven horror movies, he's pretty sure this whole thing would've absolutely floored him. Nothing makes sense and everything is weirdly distorted, like there's no constants left in his life. There's tiny towns every two miles, people crammed in every corner, winding roads clearly not designed with cars in mind, roads that make him almost grateful that they don't have the Impala.

Sam seems a lot more flabbergasted than him, picking up tourist brochures everywhere they stop. He's got the same look in his eyes he has when he thinks something's fascinating but doesn't want to tell Dean, thinks he'll get mocked. It's the same look he got whenever he used to talk about case law, about the Constitution and the Napoleonic code. It amazes Dean and weirds him out, because he never really understood how people could get so obsessed with _concepts;_ to him, the world is far more about events than ideas. 

He orders a handful of these starchy-dough-honey things, forcing Sam to get a plate of _slatko,_ whatever that is, and starts laughing when Sam looks at his plate of sugary-water-doused fruit like it's done him a grave wrong. He picks at the cubes of watermelon, pulls out his laptop and looks like a madman, asking the waitress if they've got wifi or ethernet or whatever. The waitress looks at him like he's from the moon, and Dean can _hear_ Sam resolving to buy a quadrilingual dictionary with whatever's left of their money. 

"Dude, why does it _matter,_ " he laments, Sam bites his lip. Now _there's_ a look that Dean knows well, the one that tells him Sam's sick of him, that screaming matches and shitty hunts lay on the road ahead. 

"We gotta make money somehow," Sam says, expectant. 

"...You're starting a porn career? Now? I mean, carpe diem and all, never let mysterious supernatural interference kill your groove, but-"

"Research, Dean. They have different card games here, fewer pool tables and different ways to apply for credit cards." 

Dean picks at his sweet-dough bits, thinking that maybe the waitress doesn't need a tip. "Alright then, guess we gotta get a pack of cards."

*

They drive straight through Bulgaria in under four hours, no stops no breaks no nothing.

Sam pages through downloaded internet pages, learning more about the origins of pool and _durak_ then he figures he'll ever need. He ignores Dean, mostly, not because he's really mad but just because being with one person 24/7 is enough to drive anyone a little bit nuts. He knows he's snapping at Dean the entire car ride, and that it's not even about anything important, just stupid shit like when they should stop to buy water, but it grates on him, grates on them both, until eventually Dean just turns the radio up and deigns not to listen to anything Sam says. 

Romania is where Dean finally hits the brakes, coming to the curb of the road in complete silence. Mountains stretch right up into the sky, starry sunset on the peaks. The town sign reads _Amărăștii de Sus,_ decrepit churches and abandoned buildings, and for a second Sam almost feels at home, just throw in a McDonalds and a un-down bar with a jukebox and he'll be home. 

But it's not, of course it isn't, Sam's got thirty-seven downloaded internet pages on European cards games and two near-finished American credit cards, a beaten up map and no plan to speak of. 

They roll it in for the night, implicitly deciding to stick in the countryside - it’s cheaper, but people ask more questions - Sam’s thinking Bucharest tomorrow, wifi and a café, then Transylvania. 

They’re looking for a hotel or a local who’ll take extra cash for some stragglers, but they end up at a funeral instead, women decked in black and men in worn-in suits with scratches, Sam and Dean waiting for it to be over, because the whole town seems to be there, no a single soul in the shops. They whole thing is set in a field of gravestones, maybe the only flat place for miles. 

The mourners are saying what sounds like a prayer - almost like Latin, actually - when the man who looks like he’s in charge comes up to the grave, a charred stick in hand. He looks around for approval from the other men, and, with a handful of nods, drives the stake straight down into the open casket, until Sam can _hear_ the snap of bone. There’s applause, and cries of _spiritul lui este mântuit!_

“Dude,” he hears Dean say from next to him, and Sam looks over to see his brother looking absolutely floored.

“These people know their shit,” he says, and Sam can’t help but agree.

*

Of course they stay the night, Sam having charmed an old woman straight into giving them a spot in her toolshed, her granddaughter telling them in broken English, _she says, for you boys, no cost, no cost nothing,_ as Sam pulls out the language dictionary he bought last truck stop. 

They hang out at what the granddaughter informs them is the bar, Dean drinking something called _tzuica_ while Sam tries to chat up the locals, who Dean suspects are laughing at his terrible pronunciation. 

“It’s a Romance language,” Sam keeps repeating, turning to him and complaining, “Why the hell is this so _hard!"_ And Dean wants to laugh, give him his best look-at-you-little-brother smile, tease him and swipe his untouched drink, wait until Sam gets annoyed with him, says _fuck you,_ so Dean can give him a grin, wink, _only if you let me top._

A guy the size of an actual brick wall is leaning up against Sam, sort of explaining things to him but mostly laughing, drink spilling on his fingers as he talks. Sam translates, or tries to; “He says it’s different now, they used to...something about 2003? The government is bad, apparently, thinks the practice is shameful...or something,” Dean rolls his eyes - feds are useless everywhere, it seems - “They used to… _Vă rog repetați?_ Must have misheard that…” 

The guys says something again, and Sam’s eyes go wide like saucers. “Holy shit,” He whispers, then turns to Dean, like the world'll end if Dean doesn't know, “They used to cut out people’s hearts, burn them, and drink the ashes if they thought they were a vampire.” 

Dean looks at the guy Sam’s been talking to - blond hair, blue eyes, a scar down his cheek - and meets his eyes appraisingly, “Tell them they’re the smartest people for miles, Sam, possibly continents." Sam looks like he needs his anthropological journal or something. Dean rolls his eyes, raises a toast to the guy across the bar, and drinks until his throat burns. 

“Dude,” he thinks he says a few hours later, “Why the hell is no one in America that smart?” 

*

Dean wants to stay a few more days, but Sam throws the keys in his hand, tells him that they’re not going to find their mythical destiny getting drunk off of plum spirits with Emil and his friends. Sam has to drag him out of the bar, Dean bitching all the way to Sunday.

"This is the only place we've been where people _actually understand what they're doing,_ Sam. They know what's going on. What the hell's wrong with sticking around a few more days? It's not like we've got anywhere to be." 

Sam wants to spit out that _yes,_ they do have places to be, like _America,_ where they could be doing _research_ so that Dean won't _die in three months,_ wants to point out that there's more faded starbursts on his wrist and that it still hurts. But there's this strange feeling in his chest that keeps him from saying it, just then. It’s always been him who was trying to leave, find the place where he belonged; he never thought Dean would want to do that too. In some part of Sam’s mind, Dean is still the irreplaceable hero he was when Sam was twelve, a sixteen-year-old who Sam’s stuck on a pedestal for a decade. 

If Dean left, what would he even _do?_ There’s no one to go back to. The road doesn’t have much appeal with no one beside you. He can’t even get back to his country, damnit, he should be allowed to have his brother. 

“Come on, let’s _go,_ ” He urges, and Dean looks genuinely pissed, hands balled into fists and fire in his eyes. “For fuck’s sake, Sam, who stuck ants in your underwear, there’s nothing wrong with staying a few more days - Emil says we could eat at his place, and there’s this girl, Marcela, god, you should _see_ the tits on her-” He looks at Sam. “It’s nice here, Sam. Why do you want to leave so much?” And it knocks the breath out of Sam's lungs, because his whole life it's been him who says that, and he wonders how much things have changed for Dean to start stealing his lines. 

“Because,” he says, dropping his voice, feeling like there's something stuck in his throat. “May I remind you that you’re going to _die_ in three months, and we still have no clue how to prevent that?” 

Dean turns on him, raises a hand and gestures wildly. “Yeah, Sam, how’s that turning out for us? If I’m gonna fucking die, - and it seems a pretty sure bet that I will, right now - I may as well enjoy my last few months on Earth!” 

Dean stops, his hand falling and the harsh line of his mouth going soft. His eyes almost sparkle in the morning light, and for a half-second Sam thinks his brother is crying. “Yeah, Sam,” he says softly, meeting Sam's eyes. “If you say so.” 

And Dean is Dean is Sam's brother. They leave Amărăștii de Sus in the dust. 

*

They don’t talk after that. Sam informs him curtly to stop in Bucharest, pulls out his laptop and spends the day ignoring Dean. Whatever. Dean's got half a mind to drive straight through the capital; not like Sam would notice, but he stos himself, because this is how things always go between them; they just keep pushing back and forth until one of them blows a fuse and leaves, and Dean doesn't want to spend his last months on Earth without Sam. 

He doesn’t know how to put it into words, how to explain to Sam that _it’s alright:_ he doesn’t _want_ to die and go to hell, but if it’s for Sam, then it’s worth it. He’s realized he’s not getting more than three months. He’s made his peace with it, as much as you can make you peace with that type of stuff. He just wants the next three months to not suck, really, to do what makes him happy for a few days here and there.

He thinks, maybe that Sam doesn't get that, has never really gotten it, and he smiles bitterly as they step into a café, ordering drinks and sitting down. He sips at his drink - instant coffee - and makes a face. _Wayyy_ too much sugar. 

Dean looks up, and Sam’s gone.

There's a burst of panic in his chest when he looks around and still comes up empty; _wait Sam don’t leave wait no, the_ same thing he’s had ingrained in him since he was four years old, but he forces himself to take a breath, think logically. Sam probably just needs to cool down. He'll be back soon enough-

-And then Sam’s there, a pack of cards in his hands, grim set line to his mouth. 

“Alright,” He says, sitting down, breaking the cold shoulder he's been giving Dean all day.

“So this is the most popular card game in Ukraine…” 

*

Sam only gets up after he’s suitably satisfied that he and Dean can play a decent game of _durak,_ although he gives up on _preferans_ after twenty minutes _._ Despite years of practice with American games, they’re nowhere near great: Sam’s counting on being taken for idiot foreigners to get quick cash. 

They leave Bucharest in the dust, its blistering heat and wide pavilions, swerving through the countryside. “Transylvania is where vampires are supposed to originate,” He tells Dean, the first time he’s spoken since he explained _durak._

Dean grins, this little tug at the edge of his lips that tells Sam all’s not forgotten, but Sam will always be forgiven. (It scares him, a little, how easy it is to put things like that in the rearview mirror, how much Dean will forgive him for.) 

“Vlad the Impaler was born here,” he says when they drive through Sighișoara, high walls surrounding the city, towers pressing up into the skyline like medieval skyscrapers, tiled roofs and strangely lit buildings. 

Dean looks at him. “Vlad the who?”

“Ruler from the 1400s reputed for his cruelty, mostly, you know, impaling people. Dracula was based off of him,” Sam says, reciting Wikipedia. 

Dean raises an eyebrow. “You think-” Sam nods. “Obviously.” 

“Well, time to kill vampires, then.” 

Later, Sam will remember that, during their argument, the marks were completely painless. 

*

Sam’s the one who finds the case, because hell if Dean’s spending a minute of his last three months on earth learning Romanian. The newspapers read; girls going missing in threes, unlocked windows with swinging garlic cloves scattered on the ground. 

Dean’s the one who finds them the in, though. Sam’s always been shit at that; can talk to witnesses but not normal people, which Dean thinks probably haunts him at night. 

Irina’s a bartender near their hotel, the type of girl who spends most of her time warding off guys twice her size and the remnant of that mixing the meanest plum spirit Dean's ever had. She tells him, her voice low, when she thinks he’s too drunk to remember: “My sister - missing. Next day, best friend - missing. No one believe me, but… I think it was vampire,” And Dean nods, shakes his head and does his best to sober up, says “Gotcha,” and notes the location of her house when she takes him home. 

Sam’s glaring at him next morning, sleepy-eyed and unsaid _why did you leave me,_ same shit different day, but he straightens up when he realizes they’ve got an in, something to do other than eat _papanași_ and watch the clock tick.

It's a six-minute walk to Irina’s first-floor apartment in the dark, pieces of glass still shattered underneath the ledge. No leads, but Sam says, “You know how to get to her window?” Judgy, but Dean nods, leads him around a corner. Likelihood is, Irina's the next victim. 

Stakeouts are funner when they’re prepared, when there’s a bottle of fizzy Coke and spiked coffee, gummy bears and conversation to make in the car, but they weather it out. They've got no real place to be, and they’ll come back tomorrow if they have to, and the day after that. 

*

Romanian vampires aren't like American ones: Sam thinks that something must’ve gotten lost in translation. The man who stalks up to Irina’s window is decked in an old-fashion cloak, black button-up shirt black suit pants black tie, no gun but a wicked silver knife gleaming from the folds of his cloak, fangs curving out from under his lips. 

They took their guns and blades, of course, but Sam made Dean buy garlic, hid a slim stake that he’d lit a match under in with his knife. Dean was rolling his eyes, _c’mon, Sammy, we_ know _those myths are crap, they’re not even that afraid of sunlight, they probably just sparkle or some shit,_ but Sam was adamant. Dean acquiesced for the same reason Sam insisted: even he’ll admit that they’re out of their depth, who knows what these crazy fuckers’ll do. 

Dean’s eye twitches when he spots the vampire dragging Irina from her window, a hand over her mouth so she can’t scream, but she’s got no telltale bites. Yet. Sam digs his elbow into Dean’s side, puts two fingers to his wrist; a signal. _There’s probably more of them._ He angles his gaze, lets Dean catch his meaning: _don't cut it at the vein, drive a stake through the artery,_ and Dean relaxes a bit, following his cues. 

They tail the guy separately, the same way they’ve done a million times before, on straighter streets and darker nights. It feels like hours before the vampire stops in front of a tower, a walled thing with barred windows. Sam tiptoes closer, waiting until the door's shutting to throw the stake between the gap, and waits another three minutes before heading off. 

A stairwell takes him down, and he bites down on the panic that comes with being in sheer darkness. Listening closely to his footsteps, he waits until he can hear Dean in time with him, and goes on cautiously. 

The bottom of the stairwell is lit up with what might be torches, shadows dancing on the wall. Sam crouches against the ancient brick, one hand on his blade and the other on the stake. Blurry forms move across the wall, he cranes his neck and sees three girls. He swallows, and forces himself to wait. 

Him and Dean learned Morse on the go as kids. It was the easiest way there was to communicate in the dark without breaking the silence. It comes in handy now, _dot dash dash break dash break break dash dash dot break dash dash dash break dot dot break dash dot break dash dash dot._

 _We going,_ unsaid question mark, and Sam just taps back W _\- wait._

There’s at three of these guys, all dressed the same way, intoning in a way that seems menacing but Sam honestly can’t tell, only picking up every thirtieth word or so, things like _young_ and _fresh_ and _blood._ Carefully as he can, he slots his blade from its holder and grabs the stake, bunches the garlic over his wrist like a bracelet. He leans over, presses his fingers to Dean’s palm, _dash dot_. N, for _now._

Dean rings off a shot, a distraction, “Put your fucking hands up!” He yells, because Dean is dramatic like that. Sam almost smiles, hitting the first black cloak he sees with garlic. He watches him crumple to the floor, and quickly stomps a foot to the vampire's chest, slicing his throat and driving a stake through his heart. His hand trembles - the mark feels like it's burning straight through his wrist, down to the bone. He forces himself to push it down, instead looking to where Dean’s worked in parallel on the second one. When they turn to the third guy, his hands are up, and he's talking a mile a minute. 

The girls are staring at them, wide-eyed and afraid, and Sam turns and gives them his best placating smile. Irina must be the one who gets all shocked when she peers over his shoulder and see Dean, who tilts his head towards the remaining vampire. She translates; “He - says sorry, he won’t do it, animal blood-” And then the vampire looks a Dean, and-

Sam slices the vampire’s throat, pulling out his stake and reusing it. He looks over, and Dean surprised, almost - impressed. He probably expected to have to plead the case for killing things with human faces. But...Sam didn't see good intentions in that guy's eyes, and anything who's already down to kidnapping people probably isn't worth salvaging. 

Dean grins, and Sam wonders what they must look like, two guys soaked in vampire blood clutching knives grinning at each other, wonder what this looks like through the filter of an outsider, wonders what it’d look like to the guy who lived at Stanford with his wonderful girlfriend and studied on weekends and was going to be a lawyer. 

Irina’s the one to break the silence, flinging herself forwards, sobbing and thanking them, wrapping her arms around Dean and pressing a kiss to his cheek. Sam feels off-kilter, like something’s gone wrong, and looks away. There's a strange tightness in his chest, and he forces himself to push it away. 

He tries and probably fails to explain what on earth just happened to the two other girls, his broken Romanian and their second-grade English forming the world’s most incomplete creole. Eventually he just gives up, rolling his eyes at Dean, who’s still got Irina hanging off of him, and is grinning like he’s won the Superbowl and the lottery. Sam leaves, marching up the stairwell, pretty sure that Dean will follow. 

*

They say goodbye to the girls, Irina kissing him one final time before Dean says, “You wanna-” and Sam interrupts, “Dude, we got what we came for,” and drags him off by the wrist. Dean wants to point out, _maybe our quest is about getting laid, huh Sammy,_ but knows that’d go over like a lead zeppelin. Sam got pissy enough when he tried to stay a few days back; Dean doesn't want to risk that wrath again so soon. Still, he waves goodbye, smiling as Irina and her sister hug each other tightly. 

“We did good,” He says, mostly to himself, a shock of surprise hitting him when Sam nods in agreement. 

“Yeah,” he says, “We did.” And something’s still off about him, Dean can't tell what, has been since they killed those motherfuckers and Irina thanks them, but it doesn’t seem to matter so much anymore. Nothing really matters all that much, as long as Sam’s by his side. 

*

They leave Romania in the rearview mirror, cross a border point with forged passports. 

Dean doesn’t look back, whistling _Houses of the Holy_ and bitching about Fiats, but Sam does, keeps an eye on the border until it fades out in the distance. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is taken from Bram Stoker's _Dracula_ , because some clichés are simply unavoidable. "We are in Transylvania, and Transylvania is not England. Our ways are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things. Nay, from what you have told me of your experiences already, you know something of what strange things there may be."
> 
>  _Ola kalá?_ \- Everything good? [Greek] {Transliteration}
> 
> Tulumba is a desert found in the former range of the Ottoman Empire, comprised of fried dough dipped in syrup. 
> 
> Slatko _(Слатко)_ is a watery fruit preserve that can be made with anything from strawberries to watermelons. It is commonly served as an appetizer, snack or desert in the Balkans and other parts of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. 
> 
> It takes just under four hours to drive from Blagoevgrad (Bulgarian city bordering Macedonia) to Ruse (Bulgarian city bordering Romania). 
> 
> _Technically_ , Macedonia should be called the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia at this time, due to a [fun little naming dispute with Greece](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonia_naming_dispute).
> 
> The story Emil tells Sam about digging people up and burning their ashes and then eating them in order to evade their becoming vampires, is, believe it or not, true. You can read about it on [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strigoi#Post-communist_era) or in [this French article](https://www.courrierinternational.com/article/2011/09/13/pour-echapper-aux-vampires-rien-ne-vaut-les-vieilles-recettes). 
> 
> Unlike most other languages in the Balkans, Romanian is a Romance language, meaning it descends from Latin, and presumably can be at least partially understood by someone who speaks Latin. 
> 
> _Spiritul lui este mântuit!_ \- His spirit is saved! [Romanian]
> 
> Tzuica is a Romanian spirit made from plums that usually contains about 24-65% alcohol.
> 
>  _Vă rog repetați?_ \- Please repeat? [Romanian]
> 
> Durak and Preferans are popular Ukrainian card games, played on the same card deck as most American ones (the French deck.) Durak is more popular than Preferans, and less complicated.
> 
> Vlad the Impaler was the real-life inspiration for Dracula. Famous for his cruelty and tendency to impale his enemies, he fought ruthlessly for Wallachian freedom from Ottoman rule, and is considered a national hero of Romania. 
> 
> Papanași are Romanian deserts consisting of fried dough topped with soft cheese and jam.
> 
> I imagined the scene with the vampires taking place in [The Ironsmith’s Tower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironsmiths%27_Tower), a fortification built to protect Sighișoara's Monastery Church in case of attack.
> 
> *
> 
> As always, feedback is appreciated, and I hoped you guys enjoyed!


	4. on that longest road

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That's the thing about love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologise profusely for the absolutely horrifying amount of endnotes on this one. 
> 
> (This will probably make more sense if you read the endnotes first). 
> 
> So that paragraph on the Holodomor took up an appalling amount of space in the endnotes. Something about an entire genocide going mostly unrecognised really grinds my gears, and I feel the need to use whatever opportunities I may have to inform people of it, even if that opportunity is my weird-ass Supernatural fanfiction. I understand it has basically no bearing on the story, but I hope you guys can understand why I might feel the need to talk about it a bit. I'm very sorry if I seem preachy, I really hate it when authors get preachy...
> 
> (Side note: the endnotes were so long I _couldn't fit_ this note in the endnotes, so that's why it's here. Sorry lol.)

Chernivtsi, Chernivtsi Oblast. Ukraine.

*

“I’m so sick of folk music,” Dean says, contemplating smashing in the Fiat’s radio. He keeps telling Sam that they need to jack a car with a cassette tape option, to which Sam replies, without fail; we may be in the former Soviet bloc, but that doesn’t mean we’re actually living with the dinosaurs, Dean. Sam is a jerk like that. 

They speed through tiny towns that dot the border, and Dean wonders if the real great challenge of this trip is going to be understanding Ukrainian, what with that weird script they write in. Nevermind bets about their destinies or betrayal or fae or anything; that shit is illegible. 

Sam’s gone off somewhere else, muttering about how he’s can’t possibly learn to read Cyrillic - that’s the name. Dean just shakes his head, dreams of the Physical Graffiti cassette that he’s got back in the car, I am a traveler of both time and space on loop in his mind. The line feels far too accurate. 

It's the marks on their wrists that drag them to Chernivtsi, burning like hell until Dean turns the car Northwest and drives until he hits the city limits. Dean wonders what on Earth is driving these things; it seems to like it when they argue, hate staying in more than one place, and fade at a consistent rate of one or two small marks a day. 

Sam takes a break from his Cyrillic-induced nerd session to stare at the marks on his wrist, grabbing Dean's hand straight off of the wheel and trying to compare them. "What is this?" He says, brow furrowed. Dean shrugs. "I don't know, but it would hurt less if you stopped touching it," Because it's true, the mark had just been a low, almost tolerable thrum of pain until Sam put a hand on him. 

Sam bites his lip, releasing Dean's arm. "It must be to direct us," he says, but there's hesitancy in his voice. "They want us to go somewhere where we'll - what? Fight a specific monster? And what's its end goal? What is it trying to achieve?" Dean has seen Sam like this before, and knows by now it's best just to let him weather it out and offer him a strong drink at the end of the day. "Could be it just wants us to kill their monster-enemies for them," He says.

Sam shakes his head. "They would send hunters who know how to fight European creatures," he says, and Dean shrugs in agreement. "And besides, that doesn't sound grand enough for what the Graeae told you."

"The Graeae were kind of nuts," Dean points out. 

"True, but they usually tell the truth when you're got their eye." 

"So this spirit thing made some sort of bet about us fulfilling our destiny. Why does every fucking supernatural creature out there have some sort of agenda for us, man?" 

Sam shrugs. "If I knew, I'd tell you."

Chernivtsi has this towering university that Sam is just begging to go to, whether or not he actually says it. Dean goes along, shrugs, tries to admire the way the brick-red building stretches across what must be at least a football field, domed copper roofs and spirals pushing up into the sky. The rooms have high-arched rusty-colored ceilings, and every corridor seems to wind off into some strange hidden passage. Sam keeps trying to pull books off the shelves and miraculously develop the ability to read Ukrainian.

Sometimes Dean thinks Sam missed his calling with law; he should’ve tried translation. But he slams the door down on that thought as soon as it pops up: that way lays madness, Jess burning on the ceiling and Sam’s quest for revenge and the susurrant notion that this was all Dean’s fault, that if he’s tried just a bit harder he could’ve kept Sam away, kept him happy. 

Dean blinks, and pinches himself. This continent is driving him nuts, he swears. Something about being in a foreign country makes your problems seem so - manageable, woth contemplating, like distance can fix them somehow. It makes Dean dizzy, the force of it - he's used to his problems being right front and center, not something that happened in another country. Maybe that’s why Dad never let them leave. You can go pretty far in America, but there’s a reliable set of expectations, a series of constants: pop tarts and crap motels and gas stores, no matter which corner of the continent you reach. 

By the time Dean manages to drag Sam out of the university, he’s learned more than he ever needs to know about Ukrainian history, terms like The Kievan Rus and The Hapsburg Empire and The Holodomor bouncing around in his mind where a list of guns he needs to clean should be. God, he misses his guns. He misses his car. 

“I miss the Impala,” He tells Sam when they leave.

Sam is unimpressed. “Of course you do.” 

Dean ignores him. “What if she’s not alright? What if someone’s gotten ahold of her? What if - holy crap Sam what if someone keyed her, I’ll have that bastard’s blood-”

“She’s a big girl, she can handle herself,” Sam tells him, and Dean can tell he’s holding back from rolling his eyes, but Dean can’t help it. It's only been a few days, but he's realized that homesickness - that’s what it is - isn’t a one-time thing. It’s the fucking flu - you get it, it goes away, and then it comes back for the stragnest of reasons. He’ll see a Starbucks and think of all the times Sam insisted they go there so Sam could drink a fucking chai latte while Dean whittled away at their terrible cookies, all the franchises they’d visited, from Lake Placid to Tallahassee. It hits him worse than a punch to the gut, because a blow like that, he knows how to handle. This? This is fucking incurable. 

He sees it in Sam sometimes, too. Sam’s a sneaky motherfucker, or at least he thinks he is, but he’s not the only person who knows how to check the history on that laptop of his. 1967 Chevy Impala and Grand Canyon and articles like European versus American Hotels: Which are Better? And well, Dean gets it. 

Sam’s directing them somewhere, this strange star-shaped pavilion, a salesman yelling over the sound of sizzling meat. Dean looks at Sam, and grabs a few bills. Sam purses his lips. “We’re gonna have to get cash some way other than robbing tourists soon, you know,” He says, and he’s probably right, but Dean trusts himself a hell of a lot more to steal money from Johnny the Backpacker than to beat a Ukriainian at durak, and he hasn’t seen a pool table since they got on this goddamned continent. 

The meat - pork, it turns out - is one of the tastiest things he’s ever had. Sam snubs it, saying, “I can literally see the dirt on that thing, how can you put that in your mouth,” and Dean is just about to say, lots of things I 'll put in my mouth, Sammy boy, and wonders where the fuck that came from, not the line but the embarrassment that wells up in his chest after he's thought it. Dean’ll tease Sam seven ways to Sunday, doesn’t care if he looks stupid in the process - he can’t fathom why saying stupid shit would matter now. 

He distracts himself by browsing the stalls: mostly clothes and knick-knacks, blue-threaded fluffy blouses and baggy red pants, pleated white shirts with embroidered red and black stitching. He briefly considers grabbing one for Sam, because he'd look stupid as hell and it would be hilarious, but it's too much money to spend and too much risk to steal. In the end he just grabs a drink, handing it to Sam and telling him, “Stay hydrated, you dumbass,” Because for some reason, he can’t think of a better insult. Sam takes a sip, reading the labels: квас in Ukrainian, and then in English; kvass. Sam makes a face, but keeps drinking. “What is this?”

Dean shrugs. “If you can drink a chai latte, you can drink whatever that is.” Sam must decide it’s not a fight worth having, because he just drinks his kvass like a good little brother. For once. 

*

Two hours after the market and Dean’s got them enough food to stock a walk-in fridge, bottles of borscht and containers of vinigret salads, a loaf of fluffy sweet egg bread and a steaming hot plate of stuffed varenyky, which, according to him, tastes like a dumpling but with potatoes and meat. Sam drinks the kvass stuff, and considers dumping it down a sewer drain after every sip. 

Dean’s sick of the Fiat, so they browse the quieter parts of the city, passing by grand walkway loaded with flowerpots and grand architecture and wondrous blue skies, wandering instead in the twisting sidestreets. Dean is grumbling the entire way, cursing out Soviet car manufacturers and their complete incapacity to put parts together properly, look at this fucking thing, it's not even made of actual material, it's fucking ersatz, he says, points to a 1980s Lada, it's a fucking road hazard, a shame to the proud history of the car.

The Lada, as it turns out, is the easiest car to steal. 

Sam’s laughing the entire way to Lviv, Dean incapable of going three minutes without bitching about how the drivestick sticks, how the ride isn’t smooth, the metal doesn't shine properly and the leather is cheap. Sam wonders how someone who’s spent his life in sewers and dank cellars, hunting monsters, can be such a princess about his car. Part of him just thinks that’s how Dean's homesickness manifests itself - Dean knows cars better than he knows houses, and the Impala’s been their home more than any motel room. 

Sam gets it, misses the car’s sleek seats and dark frame, but it’s not the same for him. He’s not the one who killed himself rebuilding that car, who got the keys at sixteen and never willingly drove another vehicle ever again. For Sam, home isn’t entirely the Impala. The car’s part of it, but not everything. Sam glances over at Dean.

He throws the packs of salt into the trunk, and adds the iron blade he lifted at the market (very old, the man behind the counter had told him, but work good for meat. ) 

*

Sam's kvass has remained mostly untouched by the time they stop, some small town out in the middle of nowhere, can’t even read the sign. Europe’s upside down, Dean thinks: small towns here are a whole different ball game from America. Sure, they've got the same small gossip pool and out-of-date-with-the-mainstream references (Lake Placid’s still playing movies from the ‘80s like they’re hot, Dean remembers,) but here the houses are crunched in together, the apartment buildings stacked on top of each other without any reason.

Dean grabs some sweets at the deli, fried dough topped with sugar, and Sam’s looking at him, like he’s got this idea but no clue what to do with it. 

“You think they have a bar here?” 

“You know a place where they don’t have bars?”

Sam concedes. “Point. How do you feel about trying our hands at those card games?” 

*

They go into the bar together, Dean ordering a beer -

“How the fuck do you say beer, Sam?” “I don’t know, Ukrainian is a Slavic language-” “That’s like Russian, right?” “Uh, yeah,” “Pivo, -” To the bartender, who takes his order immediately, nodding with understanding. Sam looks like an idiot, jaw agape, and Dean shrugs, “Worked with this Russian guy, once. Taught me the important words; pivo, blyat, and cyka, ” Which gets them glares from the locals, and indiscreet coughing in Dean’s directions. Sam fumbles around trying to remember how similar the cognates would be between Romantic, Germanic, and Slavic languages, before just giving up and saying, “Pivo for me, too.” Dean grins at him, and Sam kind of wants to kill him. 

The locals pick up on their language incapacity soon enough, taking turns trying to communicate; Sam’s kind of amazed at how many people here know English, although the number’s significantly dropped since they left Greece, and Ukraine seems to have even fewer speakers. But it’s enough to get the point across, if just barely. 

Dean’s the one who pulls out their already worn-in pack of cards, saying, durak? With a terrible accent. The old guy across from him doesn’t seem to mind, sipping his mead with the smile of someone who’s done something their whole life, who’s so confident he doesn’t even see it as such. 

Dean plays to lose, ends up with a handful of cards while the old man has none, the small crowd watching calling out, durak! With no small amount of glee. Dean purses his lips, making a big show of acting like he's contemplating whether another round is worth it. He oscillates, then sighs, and puts in his hand for another round. 

Three more rounds of losing, and then Dean steps up his game. It’s three players this time, and Dean comes in second, his opponents mildly impressed but not chagrined. Beginner's luck, they’re probably saying. 

Sam’s better at strategy games, but Dean’s the one who cheats like it’s his birthright (Sam lost every card game he played until he was eleven), slips aces where he should have sixes, plays dirty and isn’t afraid to lie. Sam can see him slipping in old tricks - marking cards with small scratches, spilling his drink and mopping it up with his sleeve to get a glimpse at one of his opponent’s hand. 

It pays off; by the time money’s on the table Dean’s won a fair amount of rounds, lost just enough that the Ukrainians can still be the experts, can still laugh it off. Sam’s pretty sure that wasn't on purpose - as a general rule, Dean isn’t afraid of people disliking him. 

Sam plays a few rounds too, just to seem social, but they end up playing in teams and it gets heated, because clearly the guys they’re playing don’t expect them to have done this their whole life, know each other’s playing style and tricks like the back of their hand. Sam spent half his childhood learning cards from Dean, and the other half trying to beat him.

All in all, they win 1157 hryvnia, which is enough to get them a cheap hotel and probably keep them fed for the next few days. The guys at the bar are good-natured about it, laugh it off and don’t pick fights, although Sam guesses that they'd be pushing their luck if they come back tomorrow. He doesn’t even know if they’d win - for once in his life they might’ve actually won by luck of the draw and nothing else. 

Dean is Dean is Dean, goes on swiping Sam’s beer and trying to chat up the locals, in spite of his complete lack of knowledge of Ukrainian. Sam’s not sure how, but somewhere along into the night his brother seems to start catching onto stuff, not a lot, but enough to tell a thing or two. A younger guy - the bartender’s son, Sam thinks - does a bit of translating for them, although he keeps getting swept away by people ordering. He laughs as he serves Dean another drink. Sam asks him why, and he says, “They’re saying Baba Yaga has cursed them,” gesturing at the old men, who are staring forlornly at their dilapidated stacks of money, lost in a round of preferans which Sam and Dean had mercifully avoided.

Sam gives him a questioning look. The guy shakes his head, smiles a bit - he’s got blue eyes and short hair and a nice smile, and he reminds Sam of his time at Stanford before he met Jess, when he hadn’t known what the hell he wanted but there’d been plenty of people offering. 

Dean must notice the pause, but he doesn’t mention it. Maybe he’s too drunk. “Baba Yaga?”

Sam knows that tone of voice; it's the one that says he’s looking for an in, something supernatural to crack open and beat into the dust. 

The bartender’s son shrugs him off, waving a hand, keeping his gaze on Sam. “An old witch,” he shakes his head, you know, suspicious old people, the one they get from teenagers in America sometimes, the ones who haven't realized that the superstitions exist for a reason, that there’s truth to every myth.

Sam smiles at the guy, trying to dig a bit deeper. “What does she do?” 

The guy shrugs, seriously, who cares, but says, “Old people believe she lives in the forest, that if you wander out in the dark - the forest at night - she will take your body, make you, what’s the word, like-” He taps his skull, “Bones?” Sam suggests, and the guy gives him a winning smile, a glance around before winking. “Yes, like that.” 

Dean elbows him, sloshed but not out of his mind, catches Sam’s eye. Something to look into? Sam nods slightly; they haven’t got much else to go on, and the marks - which he figures by now must be some kind of guidance - have been burning less since they got to Chernivtsi.

“Has anyone ever seen her?” Dean asks the bartender's son, playing the drunken fool and he knows it. The guy laughs. “She is not real! Americans should not drink so much.” Sam nods sheepishly, gives an apology, hand on Dean’s shoulder, “Sorry, my brother here can’t handle his liquor." The guy’s expression goes just the tad bit suspicious. 

Sam takes that as his cue to leave, mostly pretending to drag Dean out of the bar, and bidding the old men a farewell and the bartender’s son a final glance. 

*

“That guy was into you,” Dean says, taking a gulp from his water bottle and trying to wish himself sober. He can’t see jack shit with this light, crappy streetlights and no moon, but Sam’s pause gives him away all the same. “Yeah,” he says, no real emotion in his voice, like he’s purposefully trying to hide something. 

Dean doesn’t want to push it. He focuses on taking another sip of water and getting the world to stop feeling so fuzzy.

Dad never said anything about it, but Dean doubts he would’ve been too please if either of his sons turned out gay. Sam had always seemed more than happy with girls, but it’s hitting Dean again that there was a whole four years of Sam’s life that he missed out on. Maybe something changed.

Dean drinks again, letting the lukewarm water clear his mind. Jamming the car door open, he pours what’s left of the bottle onto his hands and washes his face. 

Whatever, he tells himself, Sam is Sam, and Dean wouldn’t let go of him if he was half-demon. Being into dudes is nowhere near that high on the stack. He tells himself to let it lie, that it doesn’t really matter. It doesn't, even with this weird feeling that been stuck in his chest since they got back from the market. 

“That Baba Yaga chick,” He says, the city streets awash in pale light, and fumbles for the keys.

“We gonna go looking for her?” 

*

“She’s a prominent supernatural figure in Slavic folklore, said to live in a cottage with chicken feet and fly in a mortar and pestle-” 

“And here I was thinking we had weird ass legends. Chupacabras ain’t got nothing on this shit.” 

Sam clears his throat. “-And has featured as anything from a literal evil witch to a kindly, almost weird-aunt sort of figure in various fairy tales. Basically, the only common factors are that she lives in the forest, she has a house with chicken legs, and she’s nuts.”

"You think that we're supposed to find her?" Dean says, fingers over his wrist, counting sunburst. 

"Could be," Sam says, glaring at his marks, which has been weirdly less painful since they got to Ukraine. "It seems like they're trying to pull us towards away from certain types of trouble-" like our arguments, he adds silently, "-And towards others." As if they didn't have enough trouble already, he thinks, remembering how it's been almost a week now. 

"Maybe she'll tell us something," Dean says.

"Could be," Sam replies, "Although there doesn't seem to be a huge amount of info backing that idea up." 

Dean waves a hand. "You know half the time the myths aren't even right anyways," he says, and Sam has to agree with that. 

“Anything recent?”

“There’ve been some disappearances in the area,” although the article he’s reading on Foreigner Daily tells him that the police are pretty sure it’s just murders - two of the bodies have been found since last week.

“Maybe she’s just a legend,” He says, although he doubts it. Dean met the Graeae, and up until then Sam had been pretty convinced that Greek mythology was a fictional, if fascinating, result of immense drug use. 

Dean passes him a disbelieving glance. Sam sighs. “Yeah, I know.” With their luck, both God and the devil are real, and after them. 

They scan the whole of the countryside and can’t find a clue, eventually giving up on it entirely: vampires you can find, there’s more than enough of them, one is bound to be about somewhere within a hundred-mile radius. But one specific woman? Same odds as a lightning strike, as winning the lottery. 

They look for mavkas instead, spirits of unbaptized dead girls who tempt young men and drown them, or pull them into an abyss, the type of creature common enough to be related to spirits they know. They’re weird, not like the clear-and-cut spirits of American mythology that just kill and kill and kill; in some literature they bring farmers flowers or herd their cattle. 

Sam read through the facts; they have no reflections, and when you look at them from behind you can see straight to their organs. 

“Why do they become monsters?” Dean says, because usually if you know the motivation with spirits, you know the fix.

Sam shrugs, flicks over another page on his laptop, knee up against the passenger door. “Doesn’t seem to be much consistency on that. Sometimes it's forbidden love,” he says, hovering over the link that reads Kostroma and Kupalo, but he’s off wifi and the page turns up blank. He shrugs, resolving to find out later. 

“God, not more of this emo shit,” Dean sighs, but Sam knows that they’re gonna look for these things anyways, pack in rock salt and try the prayers that the books say might work but never do. 

They’re an hour out from the nearest town, dust settling all around them as they pull in near Ivano-Frankivsk, finding the same case Sam'd seen earlier, through a different lens; a series of young men gone missing, a decrease in baptisms in the town for seven years straight. Sam's mark burns straight through his wrist until they pull up into a forest, Dean wincing alongside him but telling him to stop being such a bitch about it anyways (jerk). Funny; as soon as they hit the forest it subsides. Sam supposes it really is some sort of guidance, and suppresses a sigh.

Trails spiral through the forest, fields of flowers and towering trees perched precariously, and they follow the guidelines: mavkas love water, flowers, and if you can pass by them without being tempted they’ll curl up and become flowers, fade into the ground and die. They can only tempt you if your soul is unfaithful; mavkas originated from unconditional love, something about them can recognize it no matter what. Most unfaithfuls fall for their charms; they're practically impossible to kill.

Sam and Dean have killed a lot of impossible things. 

It’s dead country for the most of it; they pass a few families who seem to be harvesting food, Dean tells Sam he’s pretty sure it’s some type of mushroom, that he’d seen some guys doing that back in Wisconsin. He doesn’t mention when, but Sam fills in the gaps and figures it must have been when he was at Stanford. 

(It’s weird; Sam may have left, but some part of him thought that he’d always know Dean, right down to the atomic level. He hears about things Dean did when he was away and he feels lost, like something’s not entirely right with the world and he doesn’t know how to fix it, like there's some void in him where the other side of Dean's memories should be.) 

They keep walking, Sam ready to write this off as a lost cause; they should probably just ditch Ukraine and head for a place where there is some chance in hell at reading the newspaper, where they can get info for cases and actually buy tourist guides or and not have to resort to basic hand gestures for communication. 

He’s just about to tell Dean when they see the girl. 

*

Dean’s got a hand on his rock-salt loaded gun, a short prayer on loop in his head, mavka, ya tebye hryeshchu, waiting for illusions or tricks or whatever games spirits here play. 

The girl is facing them, weaving crowns of flowers and piling them atop of rocks, braids and bracelets and complex patterns. Her dress is a translucent white, and she smiles softly as she looks into the river and sees no reflection. 

Dean starts, wondering if he’s supposed to feel surprised, or interested, or taken in by her beauty. But all he sees is a girl - a bit skinny and kind of sad. Sam’s a few steps behind him, and doesn’t seem to have lost his mind either. 

“I know you’re there,” The girl says, her expression wistful. “You don’t have to pretend.” 

Dean blinks. “What-”

“I don’t know who you are, but,” and she looks up, her watery blue eyes deep filled sadness.

“You came to kill me, right? Because I took those boys.” Dean realizes that those flower crowns are perched on skulls, wrist bones and ankles decorated with braided cornflowers.

Her expression might induce pity in another man, but nothing that keeps him from pulling his gun on her and saying, “Yep. Last words?” 

She blinks, lips parting. “Huh. One would not expect that of you.” Then she looks over his shoulder, at Sam. She blinks again. “Or...you,” She says, like she’s putting something together, slowly but surely. 

She shakes her head, sits down again. “I suppose it is done,” she says, pulling out more flowers. “Do you know why I did it?” 

Sam says, “No,” softly, before Dean can say don’t know don’t care and load her full of rock salt. 

“They looked like the boy I loved, the first one. They were looking for a girl - sweet, beautiful, pure. So I pulled them to me, let their minds do the rest,” she says, and Dean notices the burgundy stains of blood on her pure white dress. 

“Mavkas are made from love,” she says, maybe to herself. “We began because Kostroma was separated from her lover, Kupalo. You must know why,” She says, smiling serenely. Dean has no clue what on Earth she's going on about, but Sam goes stiff next to him, eyes dancing with something dangerous, an implication Dean can’t read. “Yes?” He says, like it’s a dare, like he wants something out of her. 

Dean’s sick of this mythic crap. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Sammy, she kills people, stop playing twenty questions." The mavka chick just smiles wider, like he’s somehow proven the point that she’s totally failed to articulate. +

“What’s your name,” He says, the implication being, name or you get shot, because there are two ways to do these type of things; never let it be said that Dean isn’t generous, Sam. 

She pauses, chews at her lips. “Are you going to kill me?”

“Yes.” 

“You’ll regret it.” 

“That's my mistake to make,” He says, unflinching. 

“Others will avenge me.” 

“Good for them.” 

“Maryanka,” She says, and Dean nods. “It is easy to get sick of this life,” She gestures to the skulls, “Send my brethren the best.” 

“Maryanka, ya tebye hryeshchu, ” He says, throws some salt at her for good measure, and watches her soul fly up into the air, a barely-visible a wisp of blue light. Dean watches, looking carefully at Sam, a question on his tongue. 

Then the cavalry comes.

*

Turns out the other mavkas aren’t so suicidally inclined as Maryanka, pulling up the roots of trees and turning about the river. They have some kind of control over nature, Sam’s thinks; his mind’s still reeling, but he grabs his gun anyways, fires off a load of rock salt. One of them goes up in a puff, but whenever he kills one more pop up. He knows that Dean next to him, counting those same grim statistics, how many rounds can I fire off before they outnumber me, how many rounds before I die, the Winchester realm of theoretical algebra. 

One of them grabs him by the jacket, spit pooling from her teeth, “You have killed my sister, I will never forgive y-” And then dies, a sudden hit. Sam looks over to see Dean’s gun smoking, but before he can say anything there’s another one, and another one, and-

“What is all this ruckus in my forest!?” A loud, booming voice comes from the heavens. The spirit grabbing at Sam goes limp, straightening out like a toy soldier. “We- we- meant no harm, Baba, these villains-” she points towards Sam, and he’s vaguely offended, yeah, because we were the ones going around killing people, “Invaded our territory and took one of our own.” 

A shadow falls over them, and Sam looks up to see - something that looks like the world’s biggest floating mortar, the shadow of a pestle peeking out, like some type of misused oar. He leans on his tippy toes, tries to catch Dean’s gaze, mouthing; think we’ve found her. Lightning in a bottle, alright. His mark isn't burning anymore. 

The mortar descends slowly, the pestle being used as a sort of tether. It hits the ground, and out climbs an old woman, festering warts and sagging breasts, hunched over, dressed in rags and wielding a rotting wooden cane. 

She sniffs the air, lips curling up. “You have the wrong scent,” She tells Sam, and looks over at Dean. “You, too. You-” She points to the mavkas, “Go away, stop disturbing my forest.” 

“But-” 

“If you have to stop killing people, stop killing them. The birds are getting annoyed,” Baba Yaga says, and Sam looks up to realize that there’s a bird perched in the nest of her hair, with protruding eyes and stained grey feathers. It stares at him unblinkingly.

“You boys-” She gestures to Sam and Dean, “Need to keep your noses out of everyone else’s business.” Sam wants to point out that the job description for being a hunter is literally sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong, but she beats him to the punch. “And don’t give me excuses. I have no business with either Altracea or Jhudiel." 

Jhudiel, Sam remembers, like being hit over the head with a brick. That was the name he was supposed to look up - their only clue to who's been running this show. "Do you why we're here?" He turns to Baba Yaga, fixing his gaze. 

She tilts her head, oscillating back and forth. “Not right now,” she waves a hand, chasing away one of the birds. “You need herbs for that, and sparrow’s blood, and a pinch of cat hair helps. Sometimes organs, sometimes blood, but those are- not always necessary, just traditional.” 

“But could you tell us?” 

She tutters, leaning on the stick. “Could, could. Everything for a price, boy,” Sam can feel Dean glaring a hole into the back of his head, but they’ve been wandering around aimlessly for almost a week now and Sam needs answers, goddamnit, and he doesn’t care if he has to make deals with the devil to get them. 

“What do you want?” 

She leans back and forth, chewing on a blade of grass. “That’s for me to think about, and you to worry for.” She walks off, and Sam stares, flabbergasted. 

“Well,” She says, turning her head at a one-hundred-and-eighty degree angle and glaring. “Are you coming, or are you waiting to join the skull pile?” 

Sam starts walking, knowing that Dean will follow, even if it’s just to bitch him out about this being a horrible idea. 

*

The old lady is standing in the middle of the forest, snapping her haggard fingers with surprising avidity. “Hurry up, you lumbering beast!” She exclaims, turning to Sam to tell him that, “He’s very stubborn, you know. Can’t get him off his lard ass half the time."

“..Him?” Sam asks, but before his brother’s got a hope in hell of getting a response, a crashing noise comes from the forest. The old hag raises her arm scoldingly, pointing with accusation, “There you are! Lard-ass!” 

A house comes into view, a creaky thing with wiry bird-like legs, knocking aside trees and stomping on bushes. Stopping before the old woman, it huddles down in the space it’s cleared for itself. Baba Yaga taps her pestle, tittering, “Come on now, don’t be stubborn,” and the house reluctantly lowers itself. 

Dean has seen some fucking weird shit in his life, but he's not joking when he says Europe is giving America a serious run for its money. He takes few paces forwards so that he’s standing next to Sam, whose expression is somewhere between alertness and sheer bewilderment, of the you can't make this shit up variety.

Baba Yaga shuffles inside the house, opening the rickety door. “Quit staring, he's sensitive 'bout the legs."

Dean’s about to politely back out and get the fuck away when Sam strides past him, looking forwards and keeping his chin up. Dean sighs, knowing there really is no choice. 

*

Sam’s seen a lot of amazing things, but he’s still got to keep himself from gawking when he steps inside the hut. 

Never mind the fact that it travels on chicken legs and almost seems to have a conscience, the interior is somehow even stranger. Blue lights hang from the walls, looking suspiciously like captured spirits, shelves are stacked up to the ceiling with herbs and bottled organs. Intermittently there’s a skull, some human, some animal. Clutter takes up the entire floor, everything from dried herbs to rags to tomes written in Old Church Slavonic to a boiling cauldron with green fuzz coming out of it. A cat tangles itself around Sam’s legs, its fur as black as night. 

“Shoo, Svetty,” Baba Yaga tells the cat, who makes a brief swipe in her direction before stalking off. There’s two chairs in the room, and Sam is considering sitting down in the one that doesn’t look like it’s made from bones, but Dean beats him to the punch. 

Baba Yaga is leaning over the stove, grabbing at pots and pans, whirring through the kitchen like a madwoman, which Sam supposes she is. Finally, seemingly satisfied, she sits down on the bone-chair, leaving Sam standing but still feeling short as she looks at him. 

"So," he starts, ignores Dean's glare. "What do you want?"

She smiles, showing a set of crooked and yellowed teeth. Her hands are wrinkled as she places them on the table, looking Sam right in the eye. “I like you, boy. You know which questions to ask.”

Dean clears his throat. “Uh, excuse me and all, but what exactly are we getting out of this equation?” 

She looks at Dean like he’s deaf dumb and blind, which Sam is offended about, as that expression is reserved specifically for Sam. “Answers, American,” She says, wrinkling her nose. “Those marks are very interesting - I’m sure you’d like to know about them.” 

Sam can feel Dean weighing the options. Whn he looks at him, his brother is grinding his teeth, glancing about. “What do you want?”

She laughs, a short, mad bark. “What else does an old woman want? Good memories, just look around,” She gestures, a twinkling light on her index finger, and Sam sees, just for a second - the whole room goes pure white, marred by stains of black and dark green, memories. That’s what she’s collecting - that’s what spirits live off of, what fuels the supernatural. When they lose track of the physical, they hold on even tighter to what they believe to be, rather than what is. 

“Memories and a good story,” He whispers, because that's what you need - something to believe in and someone to believe in you. Memories cover the first, and a good story, the second. A good story determines a legend - because a legend dies the last time someone says their name. 

Baba Yaga nods. “Precisely. From you-” She points to Dean. “I want a word in the newspapers, a nice whisper in the big cities. Baba Yaga lives, you tell them, no laugh in your eyes. From you, they'll believe it. And you-” She turns to Sam, dark eyes full of fire- “A memory. One. Not even your best, but good. Something you wouldn’t want to lose.” 

Sam swallows. There aren’t that many of those. 

Dean taps his foot impatiently. “And?”

Baba Yaga grins, “Such spirit,” She says. “I’ll tell you who sent you - and maybe what you’re looking for.” 

“And we swear on what? Scout’s Honor?” 

“No,” She grins, “You swear on your life.” 

The door slams shut suddenly, and the cabin goes dark, screeching pots and kettles and suddenly it’s suffocatingly cold and dark, this vengeful feeling trapped in the air, come out, come out, wherever you are-

Baba Yaga snaps her fingers, and the doors swing open, light returning to the room, the cold breeze idssapating. “You see?” Sam turns and Dean’s there, gripping his knife. He tries to say with his eyes: steady. This woman is unpredictable and possibly bonkers, but she's not malicious without cause and she’s got answers, and it's not like they know how to fight her. 

“Okay.” He says, and puts out his wrists, ignoring the look he gets from Dean. He knows how these things go. 

*

The witch takes Sam’s wrists and Dean wants to scream, you leave my fucking brother alone, wants to jump in and offer to take Sam's place, take the bullet for him.

But he can’t. Sam's got this look in his eyes, the one he got when he told Dad he wasn't dropping out of school, the one he got when he caught the last Greyhound bus to of the night to California, the one from when Dean dragged him out of a burning building and Sam said, I'll get that motherfucker if it kills me. The look that says he'll do what he wants, and nothing will stop him. 

This is Sam’s choice. If he wants to lose the time he spent at Stanford, his time with Jessica, then there’s nothing Dean can do. He doesn’t know how to tell Sam: it’s not worth it, I’m going to die anyways, goddamnit Sam why can’t you be happy without me, you've never had a problem before. 

*

Memories fall through his mind, fast and steady, like sorting through papers before an exam. Jess asking him out, pressing kisses to the curve of her shoulder, arriving at Stanford, Dad teaching him the countries of the world, his first-grade teacher who told him, very nice drawing, Sam, and his high-school teacher who said, you could submit that essay and get a scholarship, amazement in his voice. 

He can feel the witch going through his mind, prodding for something that interests her. Scenes flash by; a million different monsters killed, arguments with Dad, arguments with Dean, card games with Dean, truck stops from coast to coast, diners with bad greasy food and highway views, fighting over M&Ms and chips with Dean, sitting in shotgun for the first time, the first time Dad said he was proud of Sam, Dad dying, Dean dying, a million times Dean's smiled at him and Sam's smiled back. 

None of this interests her; it just seems like a nonlinear story, filler. He'd read more than enough books; he knows what she's looking for. A turning point, the place where things come to a head. 

Somewhere near South Dakota, they’re driving down an empty road, dust kicking up all over the cornfields. Dean’s got his sunglasses on, keeps checking the rearview mirror, complaining about trucks and how the road’s too thin to do a u-turn, let alone a three-pointer. Sam’s sipping a Coke, book spilled out in his lap, Mark Twain or Kurt Vonnegut, who knows. Either way, he’s too busy trying not to look at Dean, biting his lip and thinking, what the hell’s wrong with me, thought I was over this- when it hits him that, no, he’ll never get over this, Dean is his brother and in a year he’s going to die and it’ll all be Sam’s fault and Sam can’t even tell him-

He doesn’t even know why she wants it. 

Something cold wraps around the memory. Yes, he hears. He shivers from head to toe, and when he reaches into that space - something's gone. 

*

Sam stumbles, woozy, and Dean pulls up besides him, catching him by the wrist. “Dude,” He says, knocking him a little in the chest, and when that doesn’t work he glares at the witch, “What the hell did you-” 

“Dean?” Sam’s leaning against him, blinking up at him through his eyelashes. Dean drops his voice. “You good, Sammy?” And Sam smiles slowly, a fond expression that Dean hasn’t seen in years. “Yeah,” He mumbles against Dean’s shirt. “Yeah.” 

Dean bites his lip, twists his ring. Sam’s obviously out of it, but there doesn’t seem to be any permanent damage. He runs through the questions - year, president, Mom’s first name, how many fingers am I holding up, first monster we killed - everything's there. He’ll need some sleep and hydration, probably, maybe an Advil, but he’s gonna be fine. 

Dean turns to the witch.

“Alright, so why the fuck are we here?” 

“A bet,” she says. “Altracea and Jhudiel have a bet.” 

“... On our capacity to get around language barriers, or...?”

"On your capactes to overcomes obstacles, internal and external."

“External and internal,” Dean internally groans. “So we gotta, like, sit down and have a chick flick moment, and then woosh- we’re back in the US?”

“Not quite.”

“Fucking hell, what does this thing want from us?”

The hag grins, all teeth. “Same thing we all want, Winchester,” And Dean is creeped out but not really surprised that she knows his name. “A good story. Altracea in particular - she has a knack for self-improvement. Bit too benevolent for my taste, really.” She clacks her tongue. 

“Altracea?” Dean asks, receiving no response. 

Baba Yaga waves a hand, ignoring him completely. "You need to fix yourself, Winchester, to get back home. And he needs to do the same," she waves at Sam, this secret smile on her face. "Those marks-" she points to the tiny sunbursts adorning Dean's wrists "-They're trial marks. Guidance points, if you will. Trying to push you to get it right."

"To get what right?"

"To show you where to go."

"...And where is that?"

"Where do you think an angel would call home?" Dean glares at the floor. He misses vampires. Vampires you could just kill and get it over with. 

Before he can come to any definitive conclusions on where an angel would choose to bunker down, Baba Yaga snaps her gaze to him. "And also," she says, grinning mischievously. "You might to drive fast." 

Dean frowns, shaking his head as he picks Sam up and carries him bridal-style. They've got more important things to worry about than sone old hag's strange warnings. 

*

Sam comes to when night hits, opening his eyes to a starry sky flying by out the window. "Dean?" He says, first word out of his mouth, and his brother turns to him immediately - "Sammy?" Pulls to the curb, cups a warm hand to Sam's shoulder. "Everything alright?" He says, and something must still be wrong with Sam, he knows there's a hole in his brain, something's missing and he'll never get it back. He can feel it, prodding at it like a loose tooth. 

"Yeah," Sam says, lies, feels an emptiness when Dean pulls his hand away. "Where're we heading?" 

Dean pauses. "Thinkin'- maybe Poland, or something. Maybe Germany." There's something hesitant in his eyes. 

"Dean?"

"Did she tell you why we're here?"

Dean shakes his head slightly. "A bet. She gave me some names. I think they might've been the girls in our visions. And -" He pauses, clearly skeptical. "Where does an angel call home?" Sam shrugs. 

"That's what she asked me. I think that's our end destination." Sam resolves to look it up later. 

Later on, when he's falling asleep, he thinks he hears Dean whisper: "I'm sorry, Sammy."

He wonders what happened in the memory he lost. He can feel it, reverberations; something fond but panicked in his heart, a feeling he just can't place. 

He glances down at his wrist. The marks have been disappearing for a while now; there's only about half left. 

*

They're three hours down the road, taking the road up to Kraków, trees spiraling around them, when Dean remembers. 

"Hey Sam?" He says, trying to pull Sam from his drowsy nap session, pinching his arm and poking his thigh. 

Sam blinks, drags himself so that he can sit up properly. "Yeah?"

He doesn't know if he should ask, but it's been bothering him for hours now, a record stuck on loop. 

"Those mavkas - they were talking about those people - Kostroma and Kupalo - like you knew something about it. What was that about?"

Sam hesitates for three seconds too long. "...It was nothing, Dean. Just some pointless mythology."

"Then why was she telling you it over and over again, like it was so important?"

Sam rolls his eyes, knocks his knuckles on the door. "Just leave it, Dean. You never cared before, why start now."

Dean can't explain it - there's this nagging feeling, protruding in his chest-

"Because-"

Then they hear the sirens. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from "Shevchenko's Last Poem," by Taras Shevchenko, a famous Ukrainian nationalist poet. I would highly recommend checking out some of his works [here](https://zaklynsky.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/taras-shevchenko-selected-poems/). 
> 
> Ukrainian (as well as various other Slavic languages) write using the [Cyrillic](https://omniglot.com/writing/ukrainian.htm) alphabet, which has some similarities to the Latin alphabet, but not enough to be understood by someone who hasn't studied it. 
> 
> The Kievan Rus was an ancient federation (reigning from the 870s to the 1240s) that preceded the nations of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. 
> 
> From the 1770s up until the Frist World War, the Ukrainians were ruled by [Hapsburg](https://www.britannica.com/place/Ukraine/Western-Ukraine-under-the-Habsburg-monarchy) dynasty in the West, and the Russian Empire in the East. 
> 
> The [Holodomor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor) was a man-made famine caused by the Soviet government in Ukraine, from [1932 through 1933](https://www.britannica.com/event/Holodomor). Due to Soviet fudging of the records, the exact number of deaths is unclear, but an estimated [ 3.9 million ](https://www.history.com/news/ukrainian-famine-stalin) people were purposefully starved to death, as Stalin ordered them to be punished for resisting having their land appropriated by the Soviet government. Due to Soviet restrictions on foreigners in the country, the genocide was not reported until the 1980s, and the Soviet government even bribed various journalists (such as [ Walter Duranty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty#Reporting_the_1932%E2%80%931933_famine)) to lie and say that there was no famine occurring. For more information on this subject, I would recommend checking out [ Mr. Jones](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6828390/), a fantastic film on one of the few journalists who tried to expose the horrors going on in the USSR as they were occurring.
> 
> Chernivtsi University is a public university that was founded in 1875. It is one of Chernivtsi's biggest tourist attractions.
> 
> [Ukrainian traditional dress.](https://theculturetrip.com/europe/ukraine/articles/a-complete-guide-to-traditional-ukrainian-clothing/)
> 
> Kvass is an Eastern European drink made from fermented rye bread, [borscht](https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/borscht/) is a type of beet soup, vinegret is a vegetable salad, [babka](https://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-babka-229608) is a type of egg bread traditionally served at Easter, and varenyky is the Ukrainian name for pierogi. 
> 
> Ukrainian and Russian share similar alphabets and grammatical concepts, and some vocabulary. Ukrainian is a bit difficult for Russian-speakers to understand, but most Western Ukrainians speak Russian due to being taught it in school (Many Eastern Ukrainians actually speak Russian as their first language. [ It's a big thing. ](https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2014/02/world/ukraine-divided/))
> 
>  _Pivo_ \- Beer [Russian] {Transliteration}
> 
>  _Blyat_ \- Fuck [Russian] {Transliteration}
> 
>  _Cyka_ \- Bitch [Russian] {Transliteration}
> 
> [Gay rights in Ukraine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Ukraine#Society).
> 
> A lot of the stuff about mavkas is made up (by me, not proto-Slavs). In reality, mavkas are just spirits, they can't tell anything about you just by looking at you, and most of them are created because they were not baptised. However, Kostroma, the original mavka, _was_ created due to love - when she found out that her lover, Kupalo, was actually the brother from whom she had been separated at birth, the gods punished her and turned her into a mavka. 
> 
> _Ya tebye hryeshchu_ \- I baptise you [Ukrainian] {Transliteration}. I am breaking some rules here, because traditionally, saying this will allow a mavka to return to being an actual person, but only if she has been unbaptised for under seven years. 
> 
> [Baba Yaga](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Yaga) is a mythical figure who appears in a variety of Eastern European fairy tales. Please note that a lot of my interpretation of her is inspired by Gregory Maguire's [ Egg & Spoon ](https://www.amazon.com/Egg-Spoon-Gregory-Maguire/dp/0763680168), which is a lovely book to check out if you want a fantastical look at Russian folklore.


	5. as if on skates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You can only run so far.

_Kraków, Małopolska. The Republic of Poland._

*

Poland would probably be nice, Sam thinks, if they hadn't seen the most of it from the back of a police car. Those whizzing sirens had been for them, and they'd been caught off guard, screwed up on falsifying their papers for the first time since Sam was five. 

Dean is arguing with the officer, or at least trying to. The officer has been ignoring Dean for the last hour, an impassive expression on his face, like he's seen and heard it all and nothing surprises him anymore. Or it could be that he doesn't understand English. Probably the latter, now that Sam thinks about it. 

Interpol, from what Sam remembers the endless hours he spent reading texts on criminal history, is a database hooked up to the majority of countries in the world - at least a hundred and eighty, he's pretty sure. Poland is definitively a member, as is the States, and his and Dean's crimes aren't controversial - murder and robbery are frowned upon worldwide. If they get run through, their crimes will come up, and they'll probably be sent back to the States. Right into Henderson's arms, most likely. 

This is, as John might've once put it, _a bitch of a situation._ Europe is harder to get lost in then America - more people in less space means more witnesses, word getting around faster, a higher likelihood of getting caught. Not to mention they don't know the lay of the land half as well - they spent an extra three hours getting through the Carpathians, which probably has something to do with why the cops caught them so quickly, stuck at a dead end near a ditch in Tarnów, the colorful brickwork taunting them as the cops dragged them off in cuffs. 

They pull into a bright orange building, the word _Policja_ written on a yellow-and-blue sign. Cops eye them from the balcony, cigarettes dangling from their fingers, watching warily as they get hauled in. They're cuffed to a table, and Dean's rolling his eyes, mumbling about the usefulness of paper clips and how cops only ever use one trick. Sam's too busy trying to process it to pay much mind: from the size of the city, they're in Kraków; considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world, first UNESCO world heritage site. Statues of heroes gone by passed them as they wove through the city, huge plazas and markets and domed towers that just began to touch the sky.

Nothing pops up about escape routes. 

They _could_ break out, probably. They'll have to start over again: more credit card scams and European card games (what Sam wouldn't kill for a chance to play rummy or poker), more buckets of rock salt, another car, guns. They could probably lift a few off the cops, although Dean will likely bitch about _stupid fucking Soviet guns_ for the rest of their lives. 

They'll be fine, Sam tells himself, it's not like they haven't gotten into trouble anymore. As long as they stick together, they'll be fine.

Sam had wanted to be a criminal lawyer. A defender, not a prosecutor. Wanted to make sure that everyone, no matter what, had a fair trial, because there'd been more than enough times in his life where that hadn't been afforded to him.

*

They take Sam away, because of course they do. 

Dean's busy fiddling with his cuffs, hating the authorities, waiting for an opportune moment to blow this popsicle stand and wishing prison food wasn't so universally crap.

He keeps himself alert by watching the guards, waiting for a shift pattern. They leave him alone for a few hours, leaving him with nothing to do but watch the twenty-four-hour neon clock that's been nailed to the wall, and count the cockroaches. 

The first shift change is at three in the afternoon; the second, nine. Six hours, then. 

Dean's spent enough time in cells to know that the waiting is purposeful. It's designed to make you crack; give you nothing but hours and hours and hours to reflect upon what you've done. Doesn't work on psychopaths, of course, but twelve hours like this could make just about any reasonable person give up. They haven't even offered him a call. He's wondering if Sam's gotten one; probably not. He doesn't even know who they'd call; Bobby, probably, but what the hell was he supposed to say? _Hiya Bobby, sorry to bother you and all, but me and Sam got arrested in Poland, think you could bail us out?_

So whatever, he thinks, trying to drown out the monotony by reciting things; fastest way to clean a gun, most efficient way to sharpen a blade, every American car brand ordered alphabetically, then alphabetically by model, then by fuel efficiency. How to count to ten in Spanish, then in Russian. 

He's stuck at _vocyem_ when a man walks on, burly-and-blond, the type of guy who can end barfights with a look. Dean's getting ready to play the dumbass foreigner card, which he's realized he is shocking adept at (fuck you, Sam). But the guy beats him to the punch, says "I know you are American, and you speak English. I speak English as well. Do not try to fool me."

"Uh … _yo no entiendo._ " 

The Polish guy stays silent. Dean sighs.

"Yeah, alright, I didn't expect that to work either." 

"What are you here for?"

"Wrong place, wrong time," Dean replies smoothly, the same answer he's given a thousand times before. 

"No, I apologize. I must have phrased it wrong. Let me correct myself; _why did you do it?_ "

Another cop strategy; accusations, telling you they've got witnesses, that they knew you were guilty even before you did. Usually they wait a tad longer though, ease you in. Try to make you think that you guys are _friends_ or something. 

Dean kind of appreciates this guy's style. He grins. "Why did I do what?"

"Steal. Murder. Lie. Any of them. Your crime records are impressive, Dean Winchester."

Dean _knows_ he should stay silent; that's what Dad always taught them to do. But Dean's never been much good at keeping his mouth shut, always wanted to prove the bastards who would have him in chains wrong, give them a bit of hell. He tilts his head to the side, propping a foot up on the table and giving a smirk.

"Well, you see…" 

*

The problem is; he's got no idea how to find Dean. Back in America, they had policies about this stuff; find the car, drive straight North and hit the first Comfort Inn you see, hard cash, name; Larry A. Johnson. Try for Room 25, if not; 225, 5, 15, 35, etc. Wait in the lobby with your laptop or a book for a few hours at least before heading off to search; make sure you leave a knife and a twenty in the room in case one of them's gotten stripped of weapons and cash and needs it ASAP. 

In Europe, they've got jack shit. They hadn't even _thought_ about it, like the concept of getting separated was simply too impossible to deal with. Sam curses himself - in all this destiny, fighting near-mythical monsters and losing-memories and dealing-with-weird-surroundings stuff, they'd lost track of the basics. 

He sighs, glaring at the clock. They've been on the continent for almost two weeks already, and they still haven't got _answers._ He hasn't had the chance to look up _Altracea_ or _Jhudiel_ , which is basically all the info they've got to go on right now.

Experience tells him that the police are doing this on purpose, leaving him alone with his thoughts, and experience tells him not to let it get to him, to wait it out, to get the lay of the land. But there's this itch in his fingers, this tangible need to _do something_ ; he can't shake the feeling that he's lost something, missed something so incredibly vital that he doesn't know how to get it back. 

He can hear Dean's voice in his head, smarmily telling him that _only idiots forget their paperclips, Sammy,_ and with that Sam reaches into his pocket, fiddling with the wire and getting to work. 

He slips out of the cuffs like they're made of paper-mâché, standing up and eyeing the camera that's blatantly staring him down from the corner of the room. The door is locked, but he jacks it open easily, paperclip in hand - Dean always said Sam was good with locks. 

He’s going through the halls, pacing like he knows what he’s doing - he doesn’t speak a lick of Polish, and he has no clue where he’s going, but if you look professional and stand tall, and no one will question what you’re doing. Winchester rule number one. 

Police stations all have the same setup; he gets to his stuff easily enough, ducking away from the cops he recognizes; looking off to the side, standing behind corners, disappearing in the throngs of people. 

He spends the next ten minutes looking for Dean, filing through records until he finds the room his brother’s supposed to be kept in. He walks up, prepared to break in and get Dean out when he hears the sound of footsteps rapidly approaching. So he turns 'round a corner, waiting for the door to fall shut again. 

He presses his ear to the door, waiting. 

*

“Do you want to know what agent Henderson’s report has told us about you?”

Dean raises an eyebrow, grinning just the slightest bit. “Only bad things, I hope.” 

“Definitively.” Internally, Dean sighs. This guy has a tragic lack of humor. “He said: Dean Winchester is _almost_ a psychopath. The behavior he exhibits showcase a lack of empathy, disregard for life and death or other people, and no moral principles to speak of. He laughs at torture and disregards threats. Most, if not all, violations of social norms and taboos do not bother him. He is a compulsive liar and prone to making up grand stories to excuse his horrifying behavior.” 

Dean opens his arms, goes in for the gold. “It’s all true,” he says, smarmy grin and all. If they want to say he’s indestructible, he’s happy to let ‘em think that.

The guy - officer Majewski, according to his badge - holds up a finger, paging through the report. “However, Agent Henderson has also reported that you have one very reliable weakness.” He smiles, devoid of emotion. "Your brother. Good thing we have him here with you, no?” He gestures, tapping his hand on the table. 

Dean stays silent. He _knows,_ Dad always told them: police will play these games with you, use anything they can to get you at a disadvantage. Never trust a word they say. 

Another thing Dad said: lie. Lie like hell if you think it’ll get you out, lie like your life depends on it, lie even if you hate every word you’re saying. Dean’s spent years saying, _our family's into gun collecting, my dad’s job means we’ve got to move, I never knew that ghost factoid, there are things I wouldn’t do for my family, what are you talking about._ He can do it again. He should. 

He rolls his eyes, straightens his shoulders. “Yeah, fantastic on you. How about this: I don’t care, Majewski.” 

“You don’t care about your brother?” Quizzical, but not entirely disbelieving. 

Dean waves a hand. “Sammy’s a good kid and all, but he’ll ditch soon enough. Can’t stand life on the road,” And it hurts because it’s _true-_ “I don’t really need anyone, really. And I mean, he's just one person. Nothing really special about him.” 

*

Sam’s hand falls from the door. He looks blankly at the ground, his hands limp at his sides. How could - what did - he didn't know Dean thought of him like that. He has to be lying, because Dean wouldn't throw his life away for someone he thought was _nothing special -_ would he? Dean wasn't _just one person to_ Sam, and he couldn't see it being like that for Dean either. 

He might've been lying about that part, but that doesn't change the other stuff that Dean said.

Anger wells in Sam's chest. After everything they’ve been through, after all they’ve done for each other - how on Earth could Dean think that Sam would leave him? That Sam _wants_ to? All his life he's wanted to leave _hunting._ It was never about leaving Dean, and Sam doesn't know what he has to do to drill that through his brother's leaden skull. 

How does Dean not _get_ it? 

It hurts because it’s true, because he knows Dean actually thinks that, that Dean is somehow Sam’s curse, like somehow Sam’s life would be even fucking _tolerable_ without Dean in it. Dean thinks Sam wants stability? Dean’s the most stable thing in his life, no questions asked. 

He feels like crumpling up on the floor, feels like dying. Knows he should know better; John always said, _lie to the cops, tells them whatever you need to make them think you’re innocent, and if you can’t convince them that you’re innocent, at least don’t let them think you’re weak._ But Sam knows how to tell when someone's lying. 

He leaves. 

*

It’s been ten whole hours and Sam still hasn’t broken out and gotten him, so Dean figures, whatever, he’ll do it himself. 

Small problem: security’s cracked down for some reason. The speaker in his room keeps blaring, saying something he can’t understand, words he doesn't catch. He breaks out of his cuffs, peers out through the keyhole only to see the shadow of a cop nearby, curses and hopes no one was watching the camera, and gets back into his cuffs. So much for that; back to waiting. 

The cop doesn’t come in any time soon, leaving him more time to reflect, he supposes. He tries to distract himself, but his mind is running in circles; the last thing he said to Sam, where his brother might be, if he's gotten out but had to leave without Dean, if he's coming back. What Majewski told him. 

Is it that obvious? This type of stuff - it's happened more than a few times now. Him and Sam - they’re always each other’s weaknesses, it seems. Dean doesn't know how to fix it. 

Maybe that's why part of what he said to Majewski was true. Sam doesn’t need him, not really, not the way Dean needs Sam. His little brother’s all grown up, and he's smart as hell and throws knives like a champ. He knows his way around people and he’s the best researcher Dean’s ever met, and he can more than hold his own in a fight. He'd be fine without Dean, more than fine, probably. Fix himself up with a nice girl and a good job and buy a house in the suburbs somewhere, live a real life like he's always wanted. 

Dean? Dean has no clue what he’d do without Sam. Drive until he died, maybe. 

Usually by now he’d have gotten on with it, prepared for a brawl down with the cop and busted out, gotten Sam and ran like hell. But usually by now Sam’d found him. 

Maybe...maybe Sam’s had enough of him. 

Dean thinks, he’ll stay here a few more hours, get some sleep. Then...then he’ll get out. 

*

The road is pristine and beautiful and dotted with cottages and Sam drives until sunrise, his heart pounding in his chest, erratic and useless. His car is a rickety Skoda, jacked from the central plaza just outside the Sukiennice, a high-ceiling medieval flea market, golden lights and burgundy-colored ceilings lit up against the darkness, vendors with clothes, with amber, with souvenirs, with _naleśniki._

The sun rises over the horizon, and he's looking out over Wieliczka. He’s parked near the pedestrian path at the center of the town, forehead pressed to the dashboard, staring despondently at his shoes and trying to figure out what on Earth he’s to do. What the hell he’s supposed to do when Dean doesn’t want him in his life, when there’s no one worth dying for - when there’s no one worth _living_ for. Dean thought Sam was going to, what, start a new life and find another girl, pick up his law career again and get on with it, like he was just waiting for Dean to off himself? 

A cawing bird distracts him, and he forces himself to get up, drag his ass off of the seat and walk, having no clue where he’s going to or why. He winds up in front of a sign announcing the town’s heritage salt mine, a looming strange thing that costs fifty-four _złoty_ , and he thinks, _whatever,_ doesn’t really care that it’s fifteen dollars he’ll never get back, just wanders through the ancient halls listlessly. 

They carved things into the salt rocks here, the miners from thousands of years back. Wanted something - someone - to remember them, to remember something bigger than them. He touches a carving of Saint Barbara, stares for a long while at an imitation carving of _The Last Supper_. Looks up to see an eerily lifelike angel looking down on him, and he wonders what it means to have faith in something bigger than yourself. 

Sam always envied people like that, the ones who could believe without backup, who somehow just _knew_ in their heart of hearts that it was true, that Jesus lived, that God had made them all in His image, that everything happened for a reason. Even Dean had faith - faith in Dad, faith in what they did, faith in _Sam_ \- the type of thing that never wavered. 

(Sam hadn’t known how to deal with it, how much Dean loves him. He still doesn't.) 

He realizes his hands are crumpled up into fists, and he leaves, gets in the car and hits the gas until he’s _nowhere,_ halfway from Zakopane and its idyllic streets and wooden cabin houses and green open parks, narrow stone bridges with markets at either end, where he’d stated at people milling about, happy as can be, and had felt something so sickly jealous in his stomach, something so deep that he’d just drove off, had to leave, no ifs ands or buts about it. 

So here he is, standing in this field in the middle of nowhere, stalks of rye spread out all around him, endless in every direction. He leaves the car door open and just _walks,_ lets his feet go wherever. It doesn’t really matter. Not much does. 

He stops when he sees a lady dressed entirely in white, a pitch-black scythe in hand. 

*

Majewski seems surprised that he’s still there. “Your brother is gone,” he states, and Dean refrains for saying, _I figured._ “We have called Henderson. He says this is alright. The American police forces are much more concerned with you than him.” Dean gives a wry grin. That’s more than he could ask for. 

“You will be expatriated soon,” He says, and Dean doesn’t ask, doesn’t really care, honestly. 

“Great,” He says, wondering if he should start coming up with lists of ways to annoy Henderson now or start later. He’ll probably do it unintentionally, though, when they find out every flight they try to book is miraculously canceled. Serve ‘em right, although they’ll probably think that he’s some sort of nefarious hacker too, on top of everything else. 

The cop is looking at him strangely, now, which is always bad news. “You do not wish to see a lawyer?” Dean shrugs. He doesn’t know what to say. His own brother gave up on him - what type of chance does someone he’s never met have of saving him?

He’s done most of the things he wanted to do, by now - all that was left was to say goodbye to Bobby, maybe Ellen and Jo, and Sam. “Can I call?” He asks, and the policeman shakes his head. Dean shrugs. His whole life has led him to expect to not get what you want. 

*

At first, Sam almost doesn't notice anything wrong with her. He thinks, _Polish people still use scythes? It’s a pretty outdated agricultural tool,_ but keeps going anyway, walks in a straight line and doesn't look back. 

“Where are you going?” The girl asks, voice as sharp as a knife, and suddenly Sam wishes he’d brought his gun. 

He pauses. 

“Answer,” And there’s the scythe pressed to his throat, this overwhelming urge to fall over, throw up. Looking over at the girl again, he sees tendrils of heat curling up around her, little flames licking at the mane of her hair. Her lips are pursed, expectant. 

“I don’t know,” He responds, honestly. She looks at him strangely. 

“You don’t?” 

“No.” She purses her lips. “Then why are you here?”

He shrugs again, feeling the overwhelming urge to swallow the taste of bile in his throat. “...I don’t know.” 

Her brow furrows. “That doesn't make sense. How do you kill a ghost?”

The blade presses a little closer to his throat. “Salt and burn its corpse.” 

“How do you find a werewolf?”

“Check for foxglove three days before the full moon.”

“What disappears as soon as you say its name?” 

He blinks. Up until now it's just been facts. Normally, Sam's alright with riddles, but normally he doesn't have a crazed spirit pressing a blade to his throat and making him so sick he wants to drop to his knees and never get back up.

“What?” He repeats, trying to process his thoughts over the bile rising in his throat, the shakiness of his muscles. 

“What disappears as soon as you say its name?” She leans in, her fingers twitching, and the sun is hot, burning, like the whole world’s crashing down, but -

“Love.” 

She blinks. 

“Love will always leave you. That’s why you never say it. Right?” 

“...Silence.” She says, a strange look in her eyes. Appraising, almost. “No one has ever told me that one before.” She draws the scythe back the tiniest bit. 

“So why do you not know?” Now, she’s almost curious, a halo behind her straw-blond hair, and for a second Sam thinks of Jess, thinks of all his mistakes. 

“Know what?” 

“Why you are here?” _Why would I?_ Sam thinks. Even in America, he'd always been lost. 

“...Why are you?” 

Here, she tilts her head. “To be a reminder, obviously. To keep people from forgetting.” She looks away, to where the sun is glaring in the horizon, and whispers. "They so often forget, nowadays, what is good for them, what is important," She isn't looking at Sam, but he gets the feeling it's important - she's a minor spirit of some sort, probably a personification of heat or overworking in the fields. 

He wonders what he's failed to grasp. 

Then she balls her hand into a fist, and he passes out. 

He wakes up god-knows how many hours later, when the night's finally setting, staring up at the stars. Next to him is the edge of a blade, and he wonders where the girl went. What she was trying to tell him. She seemed to think he was smart enough to fix things, that he knew what he was doing well enough that he shouldn’t be faltering about like this. 

There’s only one thing Sam can think to do, only one thing he really knows how to do. 

*

Dean’s fallen asleep by the time the cop busts in the door, light shining from behind him. They’re probably going to take him for questioning now, beat him up, throw in some punches, kill some time. If he's really lucky, they'll get Henderson to call in. He lays his head back down, thinking he’ll just try to sleep, ignore them. The mark on his wrist hasn't burned for a while now, so at least there's that. Maybe he can just-

“Dean!” And he jolts to life, like someone’s put an electric current through each and every one of his veins. Because- 

“I thought you were g-” 

“We gotta go,” He brother says, brandishing a gun in the door’s direction, and Dean nods, skips the exposition and hits straight home, catches the gun Sam throws him - a Makarov, what the fuck - and aims straight for the doorway. He catches up with Sam, glancing to his side, and something slots right back into place.

*

The guards they do fight go out easy, but they get out unscathed mostly because they take the fire exit, hopping the balcony and walking out like every day stuntists. 

They throw their stuff in the car, Dean clutching the Impala’s keys like they’re a lifeline, and bitching about how he’ll never touch a Skoda once he sees her again, how sorry he is. Sam's thinking to grab a drink, thinking-

“We should leave the country,” Dean says. The mark on his wrists haven't burned since Sam broke out of prison, but now they're back with a vengeance, and they may as well try to figure out what this thing really wants, once and for all. Maybe they'll give that lady in red and the angel a good story, while they're at it. 

He tries not to grin. “Yeah. Thinkin’ Germany?” 

“Or Prague,” Dean says, and hits the gas pedal.

Later, he’ll bring it up, drag it out of Dean. Talk about how his brother look when he came in - like someone had drained all the hope straight out of him, like there was nothing left worth getting up in the morning for.

Right now, though, Sam can’t help but think, as they're driving through Wrocław as fast as the car’ll take them, that sometimes, everything does feel just right, almost like a movie. 

Funny how one thing makes a difference, like that. 

*

“Hey dude,” Dean says, a long time afterwards, six hours driving in the car. Sam’s asleep again, having bitched the whole ride about how he ended up touring half the countryside and having to drive back in the middle of the night, refusing to mention why he went there or what happened. It’s nagging at Dean, annoying but not enough to ask. 

“Yeah?” Sam says back, drowsy, his eyes narrow and his head tilted against the window, an elbow on his knee. 

“Why did you come back?” 

Sam pauses, and for a second Dean thinks he’s going to go back to pretending he’s asleep, or that he'll deny ever leaving in the first place. And fine, Dean’ll deal, it’s not like Sam hasn’t left him before. But this time - it was like there was no reason, like it wasn’t a fight or any particular issues, it was just… Dean, like his sheer existence was too much to handle.

And when Sam came back, it felt like a _decision,_ something concrete that he’d done himself, not the weird way they always seem to get pulled back together - through cases, through work. It felt - it felt like _Sam_ chose him, or something. Dean can’t quite wrap his head around it. 

“‘Cause I love you,” Sam murmurs in response, like it’s obvious, closes his eyes and digs his nose into the balled-up sweater he’s using for a pillow. Dean goes to check his pulse, and he really does seem asleep.

Dean’s eyes go wide, and he looks at the road like it’s a foreign entity. The last time Sam had said that, Dean'd been sixteen. 

Dean keeps his eyes on the road, fingers digging into the wheel. He smiles helplessly, thinking back to all that time he spent waiting, wondering. _Whatever will I do with you, Sammy,_ he thinks, _whatever would I do without you._

“I love you too, you damned dork,” He says to no one, and drives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is supposedly from Karol Makuszyński, although I could not find many sources to back this up. "Every nation drinks in this way: the Italians and the French drink the gold of melted sunshine, we the ice. That’s why a Pole glides through life as if on skates, and that is why he often staggers, for he finds it slippery."
> 
>  _Małopolska_ translates literally to 'Little Poland.'
> 
> Okay, so Interpol in not _actually_ very focused on crime such as murder and theft, although it does comprise the grand majority of the world's nations and allow for communication between nations. Most world citizens can be run through Interpol.
> 
>  _Vocyem_ \- Seven [Russian] {Transliteration}
> 
>  _Yo no entiendo_ \- I don't understand [Spanish]
> 
> The Sukiennice, otherwise known as the Kraków Cloth Hall, is one of the most iconic squares of Kraków, Renaissance-era buildings that house a giant market of vendors selling a variety of goods, as well as a museum on the upper floors. 
> 
> [Naleśniki](https://www.tasteatlas.com/nalesniki/recipe) are a type of Polish crêpe, usually rolled into small bundles, stuffed with sweet cheese, and topped off with jam. 
> 
> The [Wieliczka Salt Mine](https://www.wieliczka-saltmine.com/individual-tourist/about-the-mine) is a popular tourist sight in Poland. It began production as a salt mine in the 13th century, and continued to be used until 2007. It is famous for its [statues](http://www.hiddensecretstours.eu/img/w-900,h-750/2016-02-24/shutterstock-192162788-1.jpg) [carved](https://i2.wp.com/thefreaky.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/statue-Wieliczka-Salt-Mine.jpg) out of [rock salt](https://www.timetravelturtle.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Poland-2012-235_new.jpg).
> 
> [Zakopane](https://www.lonelyplanet.com/poland/malopolska/zakopane) is another popular tourist destination in Poland, famous for its idyllic landscape and busy ski season. 
> 
> Sam encounters Lady Midday, known in Polish as Poludnica. She is a mythical representation of heatstroke who dresses in white and carries a scythe, asking people difficult questions and killing them or making them sick when they refuse to or cannot answer. 
> 
> Makarovs are standard Russian pistols that are found frequently in the Polish armed forces.


	6. blood and iron

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He thinks, _nothing else matters._

_Munich, Bavaria. Germany._

*

Something's been off, Sam thinks. Ever since they left Kraków, there's been something strange around them, something too good to be true. They haven't even gotten into a spat over goddamn table manners, and they do that every five hours. Dean keeps looking at him, this gleam in his eye, smile on the edge of his lips that Sam can't quite read, and Sam thinks, _what's too good to be true most definitively is_. 

It's different from how they've acted after the other times they've gone their separate ways; not half as much bickering, no threatening to leave again or tense periods of silence. They stop at a gas station (Dean: _holy shit, how is the sausage this good_ ), and Dean picks up Sam's favorite brand of candy (KitKats), leaving it on the dashboard and grinning at him slyly, before reaching over, peeling off the wrapper, licking a stripe and then passing it back. "You fucking asshole!" Sam exclaims, but he eats it anyways, although he can't quite make himself meet Dean's eyes. 

Prague is unreal, something straight out of the movies. Dean is starstruck, talking this and that; "Look at that tower-" The sunlight glinting off of his ring, his smile a million watts. 

Sam's the one who says they should stay a night, book a hotel instead of a hostel, one with a loaded minibar and cable that doesn't cack out every half hour. Be tourists, for once. Might as well; they have left the continent. 

The hotel's got pristine sheets and breakfast service, and Sam thinks, that he must be in a different reality. It's driving him nuts; this continent's doing something to him. All those tiny towns, plazas and shimmering blue rivers and rolling green mountains, hours stuck in the wrong car, the mark on his wrist a pulsing warmth even in the cold of night. They've played a million rounds of cards by now, gone a thousand miles. But still feels like he did in Hartville, like he's waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It's making him uneasy. 

He throws his bag down on the hotel bed, glancing at Dean. Again; even in a hotel this fancy, only one bed. Dean winks at him, tells a joke; honeymoon suite for us this time, sweetheart, and laughs, but doesn't ask for the cot. 

The marks on his wrists are burning again.

Something is wrong, and he can't shake it. 

*

"You ever seen a restaurant that fancy?" Dean says, kind of feeling like his jaw might fall off, staring at this mass of golden lit windows and glaring chandeliers; the type of place he's only seen in movies. The sign is cursive gold; reading _zámek_.

Sam raises an eyebrow. "There was this one time…" and then he pauses, the way he does when there's something he doesn't want to say - probably Stanford, Dean thinks with a muted feeling of remorse. 

He shakes his head: "Nevermind." He tilts his head, and Dean catches him meaning; Sam's looking at a payphone, one set up in the corner of the street. "When we were in jail…" 

Dean catches his drift. "Yeah. Maybe we should-" Sam nods, and Dean's thinking, stupid, you've had magic marks on your wrists for two weeks and you got dropped on a different continent and you didn't even call Bobby. 

*

"Who is this?" A voice as clear as glass cuts through the line, and Sam feels something comes free in his chest, a dam breaking loose. 

"Uh...Bobby. Hi. It's Sam. Sam and Dean," and it's like someone threw Methos in the Coke. 

"Where've you boys been? I been callin' you nonstop for two weeks! Not a peep! Here I was thinkin' you wanted info, and-" 

"Uh...yeah. Sorry about that. Our phones were kind of...out of commission."

"Why didn'cha get new ones, then?" 

"About that...yeah. Uh-" he turns to Dean, and he can't help it: he laughs, and it turns manic, something with an edge he can't control. Dean grins, and Sam thinks, _what the_ fuck _are we doing_ , panic and bewilderment and a strange sense of wonder clogging up his windpipe until Bobby cuts in.

"Something sent us to Europe, Bobby. We can't leave."

There's a pause, like a microphone dropping. "You boys better start gettin' serious right this instance- "

"No! Swear to God! We were investigating this hunt in Hartville, thinking there was some spirit haunting the people there, cursing 'em somehow, and we went into the mine where all these people went before they dissapeared, and bang! We wake up in Greece, every flight I book fails to go through, doesn't matter how I do it. And - we've got these weird marking on our wrists- they hurt like hell most of the time, but sometimes it subsides for no reason." _It seems to like it when we're upset with each other,_ Sam add mentally, not knowing how to fit it in. 

Silence. "You sure you boys ain't playin' and early April Fools' joke?"

"Serious as a heart attack, Bobby. I have no clue how to get out."

"...spirit. Hartville. Seemin' like teleportation. Strange, painful marks. I'll see what I can do. Anything else?"

He turns to Dean, watching the shadows of the city play in the background. "Yeah. Before we left, we had these visions - I saw a demon, I think, and Dean says he saw an angel. And most of the supernatural entities we've ran into- they seem to know stuff about us, sometimes before we do. Dean saw the Graeae, they told him we were sent here y then, and Baba Yaga-" he hears Bobby choke back a noise, "-Told us something about an entity called Altracea, and Jhudiel, and how the two of them made some sort of bet. Haven't had the time to look them up-"

"What were you doing, sniffing the roses?"

Sam pauses. He doesn't want to break this strangely happy resolution he and Dean've had, this thing where they don't argue and don't fight and don't hate each other half the time, but Bobby should know. The truth, or at least a part of it. 

"We got arrested. They rang us through Interpol. Wouldn't be surprised if Henderson was on our case sometime soon."

Bobby sighs. "You boys'll be the death of me," he says, and Sam laughs a little, although it turns into a choke halfway through. "We're sorry, Bobby," he says, almost through tears, and when he looks to Dean there's that same melancholy-humor look mirrored on his face. Because there's one person in the world that Sam has outside of his brother, and he's an ocean away, and Sam misses him, misses him like he misses wide roads and crappy diners and hamburgers and Dean dragging him to see the world's biggest ball of twine. 

Bobby laughs too, although it's not really funny, because in two months two weeks Dean's going to be dead and then Sam really will have no one, no one except these once-a-month phone calls and the bottom of a bottle. Dean's going to die and San can't fix it, Dean's going to die and everything Sam has tried has failed, Dean's going to die and Sam loves him, and he doesn't know how to live without him. Doesn't know if he even wants to.

Bobby must catch the sadness in his voice, hear it in the dip of his tone, because he says, voice low enough that Dean won't hear, "Everything alright with you boys?" 

Sam pauses, thinks of how many times he's almost died, how many times Dean's almost died, how the clock is ticking and how he kind of wants to kill Dean, thinks of the people they've saved and the sights they've seen and all the things that have changed and stayed the same, how Sam feels like he's been struck by lightning thrice. 

"Yeah," he chokes out. "Yeah, we're doin' just fine, Bobby." 

Bobby gets it, saying, "Alright Sam. Pass me over to your brother." Sam hands Dean the phone. He leans against the glass of the booth and fiddles with the loose strings of his clothing, glancing over at Dean, the way he leans into the phone like he's got a secret, how he smiles like it's the easiest thing in the world.

A strangely shaped shadow sweeps across the periphery of his vision. He tries to peer at it, but it's gone. He looks back to Dean, the way the city lights make it look like he's got a halo, how there's bloodstains on his jacket, and wonders if he's seeing things. 

When he was little, this was his world; Dad, the car, and Dean. Somehow Dean managed to take up more space than the other two combined. Sam sees it sometimes, the person he perceived his brother as; in the way he grins when he walks into a bar, in how he looks at Sam when he thinks Sam isn't looking back. 

"Yeah, Bobby, we'll be good," Dean says, a laugh on his lips, Sam having missed most of the conversation. Sam has to look away. It's fucking painful, seeing his brother happy and so goddamned alive, knowing that in two months he'll be gone and suffering and it'll all be for Sam. 

He hangs up, reaches over to say something, and Sam thinks, _you're going to be the end of me_. 

"Wanna hit the minibar?" 

Again, something in the shadows. Creeping ever nearer in the edges of his vision ever since they put Kraków in the rearview mirror. 

He says nothing about it, shaking his head and smiling when he says, "You know it." 

*

Sam is hilarious because he refuses to drink more than one beer for every three Dean has. He's a total lightweight, taking careful sips like he's afraid a five percenter could knock out his six-foot frame wholesale. 

Even so, Dean likes seeing his brother drunk, likes the way he loosens up, like he's no longer carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, like he's allowed to smile and laugh and act like a normal human being, like their life hasn't totally crushed his spirit into the ground. (Sam was a fighter. He'll go kicking and screaming. Dean? Dean doesn't mind stepping aside so he can have that.) 

So when Sam tells him, "We should get more beers. Or vodka," swirling the screwdriver Dean pushed into his hand, Dean says, "Anything you want, princess," and Sam blushes like he did when he was thirteen Dean first started bragging to him about sex. 

So Dean's high, or at least drunk, when he stumbles out of the hotel room, sober enough to walk in a straight line but not sober enough to have the good sense to eye the guy behind the ice machine. He's hunched over, strange teeth and protruding nose, and when he walks his bones creak. 

Dean wishes he had his gun, but the guy doesn't do anything, just looks at him strangely. 

Dean continues onwards, vodka forgotten, happy to settle for the cool taste of ice and water. He downs his cup. Shoving it under the dispenser, he waits, glancing twice behind him, but nothing happens. 

*

Sam falls asleep on the floor, and when he wakes up there's screaming. 

"Dean!" He yells, immediately checking - his brother's on the bed, a pillow hog but otherwise unharmed. 

Sam jumps to his feet, only to find a splattering of blood beneath them. "What the-" No time, he decides, hitting Dean on the shoulder, "Wake up, asshole," he says, grabbing his knife and gun, sprinting off to follow the trail of blood. 

The blood sparkles on the floor, shaped in large footprints and leading twenty feet down to a room with the door ajar. Sam presses his ear to the wood, but all he can hear is sobbing. 

He steps in, inadvertently tracking blood. 

A woman in a dress is weeping. A man is lying on the floor. There's a knife stuck in his chest. 

The woman catches sight of him, and her face goes ashen. Her eyes are watery as she yells.

"You! How could you!" 

"What-"

"Did you come back just to gloat?"

"Miss, I-" Footsteps come from behind him. "Sammy!" Dean comes full stop, gun drawn. "What the hell happened here?"

"I don't-"

"He killed my husband!" The woman wails, an accusing finger pointed at Sam. 

"Ma'am, I've never seen that man before-"

"I was here when you shoved your blade into his chest! You- you made me watch, you sick fuck!" 

Sam drops to a crouch, ignoring her protests. There's a ten-inch hunting knife that's been stabbed into the man's chest, a black-handled Buck. 

It looks exactly like Sam's favorite knife. 

Dean must notice it too, because he turns to Sam, surprised look on his face. "I didn't-" Sam starts, then stops, because if Dean doesn't trust him not to kill people than no one does.

"I know you didn't." 

The lady is looking at him with hysterical eyes, bloodshot with soot on her arms. "You-" she chokes up, and Sam meets Dean's eyes. 

They switch hotels.

*

They're back at those crapsack hostels, mats on the floor and stains on the carpet, meal-included deals with out-of-a-can tomato soup. 

"What happened?" Dean asks Sam through a mouthful of soup, watching him carefully. 

Sam is teetering, a spoon balanced between his fingers. "I woke up, followed a trail of blood to where she was, and then she started yelling at me."

"Any visions? Premonitions?"

Sam stops, putting the spoon down and still refusing to look at Dean. "No," he swallows. 

"Sam," Dean says, feels his fingers twitch with the sudden desire to press them to San's wrist, check his pulse. 

Sam bites his lip. "I didn't do it," he says, softer this time. "It was my knife, but I didn't do it."

"Shapeshifter, then," Dean says, and Sam finally looks him in the eye. "Yeah. Have you seen-" he waves around, gesturing like Dean's got a clue in hell what he's talking about. "You haven't seen it?" 

Dean thinks to the guy at the ice machine, the shadowy look he'd been giving Dean. 

"Yeah," he says with a pause, "I think I have." 

"It's called the Aufhocker, " Sam says ten minutes later, his laptop balanced precariously on his knees. "A Germanic legendary creature that shifts shape to teach people a lesson. One weakness; it rarely, if ever, knows the person's history. So you can tell decently easily, assuming you actually know the person in question." He hits another key, staring at his screen, frustrated. "There's nothing else," he says.

"So this thing took your form, killed that guy and convinced his wife that it was you," Dean says. Sam nods. "Must be."

"...It's probably that creepy guy I saw by the ice machine." Dean adds, feeling like he should say something. 

"What?"

"Last night. When we…" he's about to say were drunk off our asses, but the words stick in his mouth. "I went to the ice machine. There was this guy. Short, hunched over, small black eyes. Wasn't doing anything. Just...watching."

Sam flips his laptop shut. "That's probably it. I've been seeing sort of - weird tricks of the light - ever since we left Prague. It must have been tailing us, trying to figure out what it wants to teach us."

"It say anything about how to defeat 'em?"

Sam bites his lip, looking ready to curse Wikipedia for the first and probably only time in his life. "You can't."

"What?"

"Quoting; 'The Aufhocker cannot be killed.' Point blank. Sunlight and church bells might scare it."

"What the hell are we supposed to do, let it kill people until it teaches me a lesson?"

"You?"

"Well, it must be me that it's after. Otherwise you would've seen it in full, too, right?"

"But it's impersonating me. "

Dean pauses. "Could be trying to teach me a lesson about you."

"Or," Sam counters, "It could be trying to teach me a lesson."

"About what?"

"...Innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt?"

"Wouldn't you have learned that shit in your fancy-ass law courses? Or all the times we've ended up in jail?"

"Point. But I really can't see what else it could have been trying to say."

Dean throws his knife, catches it handle-down, blade pointed to the ceiling, a trick he'd been practicing since seventh grade. "What is it with all these motives and lessons? Can't something just fucking try to kill us for once?"

"The vampires did." 

Dean shrugs, not really feeling like conceding. "Still. Too many old weird things trying to tell you how to run your life on this continent. And not enough hamburgers." 

*

Sam shrugs at Dean's complaint, what can you do.

"If we ever get back to the States I'll buy you one," which means nothing because their finances are basically joint, but what the hell, Dean might appreciate it. What scares him is that when he says that he means _if we get back to the States I'll buy an entire fucking McDonald's for you_ , and _there is nothing I wouldn't give to see you out of this alive_. He wonders if Dean hears it. Wonders if he's gone deaf to it after all these years, all these years where Sam said stuff like his response right now, without even realizing the meaning behind it. 

He gets it now, though, and he tries not to think about it. 

*

San isn't there when he wakes up. Dean's first thought is pure panic, coursing through his veins and pushing him out of the bed without his conscious decision. 

There's no note on the table, or message left for him on his phone. Nothing. Dean forces himself to take a breath, grabs his gun, and heads out.

Him and Sam have protocols. You don't spend your life hunting and killing monsters only to lose your head as soon as you can't find someone ASAP. It's possible that San's left to find them coffee or breakfast or do some nouveau exercise routine he found online, or explore the local culture without Dean's smartass comments or something, and in all his university brilliance really did just forget to leave a note. 

It's also possible he's been kidnapped, severely maimed, or killed. 

No scuff marks on the floor, no knocked over cups, no signs of struggle. The threshold a meter off the ground has no markings on it, and neither does the underside of the bathroom sink, which are their usual places to leaves marks to indicate if something's taking them unwillingly. H or S , if you have enough time to make more than a tally mark; _human_ or _supernatural_. 

He asks at the reception, and the lady at the desk tells him, in amazingly fluent English, that his brother went outside about an hour ago, looking like he was heading East. Dean nods, winks without much heat behind it, thanking her as he leaves. 

Munich is this strange combo of old and new, sleek Gothic architecture populating in the downtown next to squat colorful two-story souvenir shops. Dean ducks into a café, grabbing himself one of the slices of Black Forest cake on display, by recommendation of the girl behind the glass case. He lays down a few euros and glances at the news, trying to decipher the German, see if there's anything worthy of checking out. The image shows a downtown scene; a flower-lined plaza with police tape, a close up on a man running from the authorities-

"Miss," Dean says as he pushes euros at the girl. He points to the TV, "Do you know where that is?"

She nods, and two minutes later Dean's hitting the pavement, badly drawn directions in hand, _wait for me Sam_ a mantra in his head, over and over and over. He gets to the scene of the crime too late; there's a bloodied woman with a rip in her blouse and a bullet between the eyes. 

(Dad always told them: if you have to kill something human, aim for the head. The heart is too messy, too many bones and vessels in the way.)

But Dean isn't looking at the corpse; he's looking for footprints of blood, blackened sulfur, something that'll show him where the fucker who stole his brother's body went. 

He finds his clue because of the gravel road, recognizing Sam's too-big shoe size in the muck. 

He finds it in an alleyway. 

"Dean!" It says, looking relieved, hands out as if to placate. "I know it looks bad, like-" and its eyes are wide, the same way Sam's go when he thinks he's in trouble, and Dean has a sickening thought, like a crunch of bone; what if this is all that's left of my bother, what if it killed Sam and there's nothing left-

"Sam," he says, not to the thing in front of him, but a prayer; please be alive. 

"Dean, it's me. The thing- it's not imitating me, it's imitating people to make me seem like a murderer. The woman at yesterday's crime scene - she _was_ the shapeshifter. And today, that guy- the waiter- he tried to poison my drink, came behind me with a knife-" he says it all in a rush, like he's terrified, like if Dean doesn't believe him he's done. 

Dean closes his fists, keeping a hand trained on his gun.

"What's your name?" Sam's gaze snaps up to him, immediately catching his drift. 

"Sam Winchester."

"First monster you killed?"

"Salted and burned a ghost when I was fourteen. You were there, Dad was in Kentucky."

"My favorite meal?"

"Cheeseburger, duh."

"Best type of pie flavor?" 

Sam rolls his eyes. "Apple, according to you. I personally strawberry rhubarb, but-"

"Shh, Sammy, leave the important decisions for the intelligent life, thank you very much. Now," Dean says, leaning in so he can get a good look into San's eyes; they're perfectly fine, same hazel-green they've always been. Nothing different about him, although he's flushing more than usual.

He drops his voice. Sam's eyes flicker to Dean's lips. His lashes flutter, and Dean thinks-

"When was the first time I caught you watching porn?"

Sam blinks. "You asshole!" He says, and whatever electrical current that was there changes voltage, the tension dissipating. 

"Now Sam, this is very important," Dean says, choking through chuckles, "I need you to tell me. What monster would know your porn-watching habits?" 

"What type of brother would know my porn habits!" Sam exclaims, laughing but it's true, Dean kind of wonders at it sometimes, what it'd be like if they hadn't grown up the way they had, if Sam hadn't been his whole world wrapped in cellophane. Sam walked in on Dean when he was twelve, and all Dean had really cared to do was make a joke and watch Sam turn beet red. He's found Sam with a good porno or a girl more than a few times, and it's never bothered him. 

_Huh_ , something in the back of his mind clicks. 

Sam is looking at him. He must've paused for too long, let something up. 

"A good one," he says, winks. Sam looks at him for a second, and Dean is suddenly all too aware of what this could look like, one hand in Sam's shirt and the other near his head, all up in his space, mere inches away.

Sam's gaze drops to his lips, and-

"Polizei!"

Dean drops his hands, feeling flushed and unsteady. He glances at Sam, who's a mirror of how he's feeling, and he shakes his head, trying to put that - whatever it was - out of mind. 

He taps his gun, tilts his head, and they run. 

*

Munich disappears in the rearview window, falling aside in favor of small towns and charming little houses, castles and drawbridges. 

Sam thinks he should be relieved, but between the strange shadows in his peripheral vision and the way Dean keeps glancing at him when he thinks he's not looking, he's near losing his mind. 

Sam's always known something is wrong with him. He's known it ever since he was a kid, once he realized that most people didn't spend their lives in their cars, that most people didn't sleep with knives under their pillows, that most people had a mom. He had to reconcile the fact that his whole family was a monster magnet, and he didn't know how to put it together, didn't know why his reality seemed to be separated by a sheet of glass from everyone else's. 

The killing blow was when he was thirteen. He remembers it like it was yesterday; standing outside of their motel in Nebraska, the sun baking into the green-gold grass, hot asphalt underneath his feet. Sam had a copy of _Atlas Shrugged_ in his hands, so old the pages were falling out, a bottle of Coke gone flat boiling on the concrete. 

Dean had been kneeling on the pavement, wrench clenched between his teeth as he peered at the undercarriage. It had been hot all summer, and it showed; they went back and forth between tan and red. Dean was wearing a ratty tank top, the type of thing that got ripped up before it could be passed down to Sam. 

There was a dilapidated farmhouse in the distance, a gas station ten miles down the road, nothing to do and nowhere to go for miles. But it'd been a good summer, spent jumping into lakes and playing endless rounds of cards, in small towns with good pie and edible salads, and once, out on some backroad in Montana, Dean had even discreetly passed Sam the car keys and said _you break her, you die_. 

Sam remembers that Dean had come out from under the car, taken the wrench in his hand, and said, "You comin', Sammy?" 

Sam had just thought, knee-jerk, _like I'd ever want to leave you,_ and something in his heart had stuttered, so hard that Dean looked at him funny, asked if he had a fever. Sam'd just stood there, stupid and paralyzed, thinking _I'm in love with my big brother_ on repeat.

The pain, the problems, every single feeling of guilt he'd had - those would come after. But in that moment, all he'd thought was that this was it for him, that there would never be anyone other than Dean.

He thought he'd found that person in Jess, the cut-and-dry opposite of Dean who he'd fallen in love with in ten seconds flat, but that had fallen apart like spider-spun glass in his hands.

He's learned to put in in a box, to keep it as far from thought as possible, and mostly it works. He's had almost a decade to deal with it. But sometimes shit just happens, what with the way he'll catch Dean looking at him sometimes, and it scares him, because sometimes it feels like he's that kid again, who didn't know any better and was so in love with his brother that it killed him sometimes.

This reminds him of that. He doesn't know why, but he feels like he's waiting for the other shoe to drop. Dean keeps looking at him, the way Sam used to dream of, but he's not naive enough to think it's what he wants, not that stupid anymore. Dean looking at him that much means suspicion, means that bad things come in threes. 

Sam knows. He's waiting too. 

Their hotel is a lodge outside of Marktoberdorf, mountains as far as the eye can see dotted with black-and-white churches in the background. They book into a hotel that feels almost like a motel, two stories high and with uncomfortable beds and crappy sinks to boot. 

There's only one bed, again, and Sam is so fucking sick of this continent and its miniature rooms, narrow roads and endless crowds. Three weeks of this and it's torture, this desire to reach out and touch Dean, press a hand to his shoulder and just be there, know Dean is alive and his heart is beating, and that in two months and it won't be. 

He sits on the floor instead, interlocking his fingers and letting his eyes slip shut, praying to not have any dreams.

When he wakes up and finds a corpse at his feet, he's not surprised. 

*

Sam is pulled tight as a wire, the lines of his veins sharp and visible, something bloodshot in his eyes. He drinks cup after cup of coffee, and sometimes Dean catches him slipping in shots of whatever's at the liquor stores they pass. Sam is insistent, _no, it's fine, fucking hell, shut up Dean, just let me drive._ Won't stop, images of a small child lying bloody at the end of his bed, a bullet hole in the heart. He drives like this thing is killable, like he can outrun the trail of bodies falling at there feet.

There's still shadows behind his eyes. 

Dean passes him the keys, prays like hell to a god he doesn't believe in that they don't swerve off the road. 

It comes to a head on the border of France, as they pass by some gas store selling croissants and percolated coffee. Sam's been driving for the last few hours, and they've narrowly avoided both the cops and car crashes. Sam's been like a live wire, ready to snap any time Dean so much as opens his mouth. 

"Sam," he says, slamming the door shut behind him. "I think you should let me drive. You're driving yourself nuts, dude."

"No."

"What?" 

"I said; no, you can't drive."

"Why not?"

"Because it's me who's the reason we're running away, not you!" Sam turns on him. "Dean, I-" he stops short. 

"What?"

"I know you don't believe me," he says miserably, crumpling in on himself. "And I...don't blame you. I wouldn't trust me either. But…" he trails off.

Dean's had enough.

"Sam. I don't care if it's you."

"What." It's not a question.

Dean spreads his hands, feeling as hopeless as he did the day that Sam left him for university, standing at a dead empty bus station in Oklahoma and watching the wheat fields rustle in the wind. 

_I love you too much to be a good person_ , Dean wants to say, because it's true; Dean would throw innocent people into the fire if it meant keeping his brother safe. He knows it makes him a bad person, probably, but he's spent his entire life saving people and asking nothing for it; he figures he's owed his due. If the universe says that Dean isn't allowed to love his brother in the most selfish way possible, then the universe shouldn't have fucking killed his mom and sent his dad to hell and made every girl he wants for more than a one-night stand run away screaming as soon as he tells her the truth. 

He looks at Sam, open-mouthed and shiny-eyed, hands braced on the dashboard. Dean shrugs. 

"Because…" there's a million things he could put there. _Because you're my brother. Because you're the only person I have left. Because if I had to choose, the world or you, Sam, it's you. Every time_. "...because there's no one else, Sam," he says, and doesn't that just that sum it up. 

He looks at his brother, actual tears in the corners of his eyes, something shining through in his expression, something Dean thinks looks strangely like hope. He gnaws at his lip, and Dean thinks back to when Sam was five, scared of thunderstorms and clutching Dean's arm in the bed, asking Dean to protect him. Dean said; _I always will, kiddo_. He meant it. 

Still does. 

The mark on his wrist is burning like hell, suddenly, and Dean cringes, pressing his wrist to the steering wheel and wishing he had water. He glances at Sam, and notices him pressing a hand to his wrist too, forcing himself to breathe. 

Huh. 

"You know what?" He says, later on, when they're passing by Strasbourg, stopped at a gas station. Sam looks at him, question in his eyes. It's the first thing either of them have said in hours. 

"Yeah?" He says, voice hoarse. 

"I say we hit France. Maybe we could go to Paris, reenact a scene from one of those girly romance movies you like," he says, grins when Sam goes the slightest bit pink, rolling his eyes and promising to get him fucking carbonated water, the bitch.

Dean goes to take a piss in the bathroom, splashing some water on his face and on his wrist. When he walks out there's that same strange hunched over figure, pure black eyes and yellowed teeth. He's looking at Dean strangely, as if surprised. 

Dean bares his teeth, gives it the finger, and pulls out his gun. The thing backs off, and Dean contemplates killing it for a second, although he doubts that Sam was wrong. But there could be people around, and Germany has strict gun laws; the last thing they need to attract more attention from the authorities. 

And it’s not doing anything, not now. It seems almost...afraid of him, shrinking into itself and looking at the ground. It raises its yes to him and seem...puzzled.

“ _Du bist ein seltsamer_ , Winchester." It says in a strange, growly voice, and slinks away. 

It slinks away. 

Dean is still in awe of the fact that somehow every single creature they meet seems to know their names, preferred underwear and destiny, so he’s a bit too busy to try his hand at translating from German. He shrugs, resolving to kill it if he ever sees it again. That thing is fucking creepy. 

But he gets back into the car, and Sam is smiling, and there are no shadows as they cross the border into France. 

*

Sam knows his eyes are gleaming as they pass through Strasbourg, canals and thatched-cottage houses all around them, and when they pick a room at a place just outside of Dijon, bright mustard fields gleaming yellow-green in the background, sun-baked concrete. Sam has to shake his head to remind himself that he’s not in a memory. The shadow’s that’s hung over him ever since they left Kraków is gone now, but Dean is still looking at him differently, like something’s changed, and Sam can’t help wondering if it’s for the better. 

They get a room that night, single bed as always. Just before he falls asleep, he leans over and tangles their fingers together, thinking, _good._

The marks on his wrist are burning again, but he's not really that surprised. They've passed more than three tests now; and he thinks, _we're on the verge of the final one._

He thinks, _let them come. We'll win._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title comes from Otto von Bismarck, one of the most important figures in German unification and a seriously impressive military strategist. "Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided—that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849—but by iron and blood.” (The speech is generally cited as his 'Blood and Iron' speech, so the chapter is technically titled after that revision.)
> 
> [Czechian Sausage](http://www.pragueartelstyleblog.com/dining-drinking/czech-sausage-101-what-is-it-and-where-can-you-try-it.aspx).
> 
>  _Zámek_ \- The Palace [Czech] 
> 
> I used [this knife](https://www.buckknives.com/product/119-special-knife/0119FAM01/) as a reference for Sam's weapon of choice. 
> 
> The Aufhocker is indeed a type of German mythological shapeshifter that tries to teach its victims a lesson, and cannot be killed, although it may be threatened with sunlight and church bells. Anything else mentioned about it is made up. 
> 
> [Black Forest Cake](https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchen/black-forest-cake-4664368) is a Bavarian chocolate sponge cake using filled with vanilla icing and topped off with whipped cream and maraschino cherries. 
> 
> _Polizei!_ \- Police! [German]
> 
> [Gun control laws in Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_control_in_Germany#Current_laws). 
> 
> _Du bist ein seltsamer_ \- You’re a strange one [German]
> 
> Dijon is a French city internationally famous for its mustard crops.


	7. only with the heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes you can see the ghosts.

_Nice, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. France._

*

Someone calls them in the middle of the night on his burner phone. Sam slams his hand over the phone, groggily pushing the _reply_ button when he sees the familiar 1-605 number. 

“‘Ello?” He hears himself saying, rolling out of bed and trying to prop himself up without disturbing Dean. 

“‘Ello yourself, it’s seven in the afternoon on a Sunday and I’ve tried calling you boys six times already,” Sam can vaguely recall hearing the ringing noise a few times, trying to ignore it, and shoving the pillow over his head. 

“Bobby, there’s a seven-hour difference from Sioux Falls to Paris,” Sam groans, forcing himself to stand up, crunching the phone between his shoulder and his ear and hitting the bathroom, splashing water over his face and blinking twenty-seven times over. “Whaddya find?” He mumbles, dropping his voice a bit. 

“Not much,” Bobby says, annoyed. “Some of the books say that this ‘Altracea’ is some kinda demon, others say she’s just a spirit. Most of the time she seems to be of some sort of Germanic origin.” He falls silent for a second, and Sam can swear he hears the rustling of pages across the cackling line. “Either way, the sources are pretty clear that she’s some sort of a trickster. Not always malicious…” He trails off, “Here: _and thus the demon said; here is your great reward, you shall…_ and the page is ripped. Damnit. And Jhudiel is an angel of some sort, although he's not a woman - he's some minor angel of work and spiritual labors. Are you sure you two saw these two making a bet?” 

“Does it say anything about what they want?" Sam says instead of answering, pressing a hand to his forehead. 

Bobby pauses, and Sam’s thinking about Baba Yaga again, _what do all spirits want, Winchester? A good story._

“Doesn’t say.”

“That would be too easy,” Sam says, and Bobby laughs. 

“Jhudiel's all about destiny, fulfilling your spiritual due and improving your relationship with God. Altracea's a bit trickier, but she seems to like scewing over angels. There's a phrase here - 'alternative destinies' - says she uses that a lot. Another books says she's into quests, though. Big stuff. Destiny, that type of stuff. Likes a big showdown.” 

“Sounds about right for a demon who sends people across continents,” He replies, thinking back to the night they came here, that perfectly ordinary stayover in Hartville. He can feel it building, and he has a feeling he knows where this ends. Christian mythology; it’s all there. Demons like a good story, and he knows a thing or two about roundabout endings. 

He peers into the bathroom mirror, taking in his reflection; he looks about as well-slept has he has in weeks, as healthy as he's going to get. He wonders what the demon's game is, what business a demon and an angel have making a deal. 

"Oh, and Bobby?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you have anything on the difference between sulfur and sulfite?"

Pause. "No, it doesn't say anything about that. Why you askin'?"

Sam thinks back to Hartville, how the rock powder on the ledge wasn't precisely the right shade of yellow. "Nothing," he says, glancing at the door. "Look, call me back if you get anything, okay?"

He can _hear_ Bobby rolling his eyes, but truth be told he's dead tired and it's really not his fault that Bobby forgot about the existence of time zones. 

"You and your brother," Bobby sighs. "Absolutely impossible, you know that?" And Sam grins, laughs a little because, well. It's true. 

He hangs up, and goes back to sleep. 

*

They pass through Marseilles, and it’s the weirdest fucking thing. 

“This place was the scene of the last outbreak of the bubonic plague in Western Europe,” Sam tells him, an encyclopedia as always, and usually Dean ignores that stuff. Mass outbreaks can cause an inflood of ghosts, sure, but usually within a century or two they’ve rotted away, no matter how grave the injustice or grand the tragedy. 

Europe does things differently. They passed through field up in the north - World War 1 and 2 war sites, Sam’d been telling him - and there were ghosts, mangled and nearly unrecognizable as humans. They didn’t _do_ anything, no attacking and no revenge, just looked blank, and lost. The cause they’d been created from, anything they might have to avenge, is so far gone that they’ve got nothing left. Dean wondered if that was how America would look in a few centuries, and it sent a chill up his spine. You saw that kind of shit in the occasional civil war memorial, but - nothing on this scale. 

Dean had thought to stop and kill them, mostly out of sympathy, but who knew how on earth they were supposed to find graves like that. And besides, Sam’s been like a machine since they left Germany, taking the wheel when Dean gets tired, barely sleeping. The line of his shoulders says he’s got an idea he really doesn’t like, and the constant frown he’s wearing says he’s pretty sure it’s gonna happen. 

“Did Bobby call back?” He says, just avoiding swerving off the road when a boy in blue, old-fashioned war getup passes in front of the car, shimmering in the heat. 

“Yeah.”

“What did he say?”

“Not much.” Dean glances at Sam. He’s lying, obviously, Dean’s been able to tell since Sam was six and saying he didn’t eat the last ice cream (bitch). The question is just whether it’s worth poking at. Advantages: might get some info, Sam’s in a shit state of mind so he probably isn’t processing it well. Disadvantages: will probably piss Sam off, and Sam probably knows what he’s doing with this stuff anyways. 

He decides not to push it. They've got enough ghosts around them already; no need to dig up more. 

*

There’s nothing trying to kill them, and it’s making Sam nervous. He knows he can get like this in America, too; itchy and suspicious, looking for banshees at every truck stop, behind every 7-11, but it's worse now. It’s worse now because he _knows;_ knows there’s something after them, waiting for them to do _something._ Those two women have probably sent just about every obstacle that they’ve had in their way; pulling in favors or making deals, and what’s more is that now they've _stopped._ That means they're gone or gearing up, and Sam has never believed himself lucky. 

He knows he’s running himself raw, throwing Dean for a loop by insisting on driving and refusing to sleep, but Dean’ll figure it out eventually; he knows Sam better than anyone (it scares Sam sometimes). 

He doesn’t know what it wants, precisely; a good story is hard to define, as is a quest, especially when he’s got no clue what they’re looking for. He remembers Dean's question from all those weeks ago; _where would an angel call home?_ And he thinks, _there's the answer._

“You wanna go to Rome?”

*

They barely see Nice, and for that Dean is kind of grateful, because every European city is starting to look the same; the old buildings and historic landmarks and ghosts. People blend into the background, the same kind of monotony that Sam would always voice as his complaint about small-town America. Dean never minded, because America is _home,_ as far as he has any value of the word. France is just a foreign country. 

Although it is beautiful, long stretches of beach and the most delicious chocolate croissants Dean has ever had, fantastic bread and cheese and sausages (although at this point he _would_ commit a triple homicide for a cheeseburger, make no mistake). 

He forces Sam to actually _stop_ and _eat something_ for once, much to Sam’s chagrin. He's rolling his eyes and bitching as they walk into a café, although the effect is muted by the fact that he keeps almost falling asleep as he walks, forcing Dean to grabs him and physically drag him to the pastry case. 

“Uh... _pain au chocolat, s’il te plaît?_ ” He says, the woman behind the counter, who's looking at him like he is singularly unimpressive on a worldwide level. He’s vaguely offended; not like she offered to speak English or anything, and he’d only really learned French from a few guys up in Maine back when he was fifteen. But, well, when in Rome, he supposes. 

She bags the chocolate croissant and passes it to him, begrudgingly making a _café au lait,_ which he immediately passes off to Sam, because milk and sugar is for wimps. Sam accepts it, half-comatose as he is, and Dean tells him, “You are not driving until we hit Milan.” Sam glares, Dean pays, and he slips the car keys from Sam’s pocket. 

They drive past the throngs of ghosts, and fields of cemeteries, shimmering light whizzing in the rearview mirror. Sam bitches, drinks his coffee and says he’s not tired until his words slur and he falls asleep, curled up around his jacket, knee propped up against the car door.

Dean drives straight and doesn’t look back, keeping an eye out for signs to Italy, Milan, Rome, anything that’ll point him in the right direction. He doesn't know where they’re going, has no clue why Sam’s developed this strange desire to see the home of Catholicism, the root source of Latin, but he thinks that maybe he understands. He’s never understood religion, but that sort of feeling of inevitably, like you’re bound to end up somewhere? He gets that.

He glances at Sam, fingers curled possessively around his sweater that Dean’s pretty sure is actually his, but whatever. 

Feels a bit like gravity, this. 

*

They don’t actually make it to Milan. Dean says, pointing to a sign, “It’s way too far East, dude. Look, these marks-” He points to the rapidly diminishing sunbursts on his wrists, “Are going out at a rate of about one every two to three hours. That’s enough to get us maybe three nights before shit truly hits the fan. We have time for a pitstop, maybe in Genoa or Florence, and we could possibly sleep in Perugia for a night, but if you want to make it to Rome in time, then we don’t have time for tourist crap.” 

Sometimes Sam forgets that Dean is the most practical person he knows. He doesn’t know how; he knows Dean like the back of his hand, like a well-worn deck of cards, like the place other people call _home,_ but he still manages to forget the important things, and it makes him feel all of ten years old again. 

He grumbles into his sweater, pretends he’s not still kind of in awe, of Dean, of the world, of the astronomically low chances the universe had of making them related. He thinks about all those times in the car where he’d wanted nothing more than to reach out and interlace their fingers, say something like, _hey,_ and have Dean _know_ what it meant. He thinks of the disappearing stars drawn on the inside of his left wrist, thinks about how Dean’s days are numbered and that even if they survive the next few days, there’s still only two months after that worth living for. 

The thoughts roll over in his head, making him incapable of falling asleep. He blinks, rubs the sleep from his eyes, and turns to look at Dean for a long hard minute, take it in; the line of his shoulders and the sharp set of his jaw, the way he drives this foreign car like he knows its every tick, that slight smile of his that’s always curved just a little to the right, not his usual one. The one he saves for private moments, the one even Sam’s only seen a few times but that he catalogs obsessively. The one that means that’s he’s happy. 

Sam thinks about that, thinks about the ticking clock on his wrist, and then he says, “Hey, why don’t we eat somewhere nice tonight.” 

*

Sam chooses the weirdest places. Dean’s thinking that Jessica must have done some serious renovations on his taste in the time he spent at Stanford, because the place Sam decides on going to is so far away from the Winchester standard it may as well be located on Mars. 

They spent hours on the streets of Florence, Sam insisting on at least bothering to _see_ the city of the Renaissance, _it's a once in a lifetime opportunity, think about it, this is where_ _Dante_ and _Da Vinci and Michaelangelo were born_ _, this is where Western civilization started,_ and Dean really really wishes he brought, like, portable camping stool and a book or something, because he would rather fight and an actual army of zombies than go to one more museum. 

It's not all bad, though. Sam seems happy, which is enough reason for Dean to keep his complaints to a minimum. 

Doesn't mean he's not weirded out when Sam insists on his earlier out-of-the-blue declarations, dragging them across the city in order to find 'the farthest thing from a diner that exists in this province,' landing at a place where the chairs are probably worth more than Dean's earned in his entire life. The whole restaurant's been carved from a cave, high arched rock walls complemented an entirely glass entrance. Swarovski chandeliers hang high, and all the waiters are dressed to the nines, suits and pleated dresses. 

There are candles on the tables. 

"Seriously, Sam? Fucking _candles?_ "

Sam glares at him. "Dude, if we're dying in-" he checks his wrist "-less than three days, I am going to die being able to say that I have had at least one nice dinner in the course of my quarter-of-a-decade life." 

"Didn't you go to nice places when you were in California? The whole state is like, one big fucking seven-dollar-a-coffee cafe." Dean _hates_ buying coffee in Californian cities. With a passion. 

Sam looks away. "Yeah, Dean, I did go to nice places when I was at Stanford," he sighs, as if this should be obvious. "I just didn't go with _you._ "

It takes Dean a moment to process that. For a second he's pretty sure his heart rate's gone flat, that he's in some sort of hallucination. "But…" he starts, filing in the things he's always thought. _You never wanted to go anywhere with me._ "...I don't _like_ fancy restaurants,” He says instead, because he can't think of anything else to say. 

Sam smiles, sort of sadly, looking at Dean for a long, long, time; Dean imagines him categorizing every scar, every hurt, every bad thing they’ve ever said to each other, and somehow not coming up short, somehow deciding that this - whatever they have - is worth salvaging. 

“For me?” He says, almost pleading, and it hits Dean like a brick to the head; all this time he’s been thinking, the last day of Dean’s life will be the first of Sam’s new one, and he’s _wrong._ The last of Dean’s life is going to be his brother’s as well, and Dean feels so, so stupid. 

He wonders if Sam hears him say, softly, slowly, “...Anything.” 

*

Dean munches on the focaccia, looking at his wine glass as though it might grow arms and attack him. He looks out of place in the way that Sam feels when they walk into a bar, when a girl who’s he’s never met walks up to him and asks his name, gives him her number. 

Sam orders salad, raising his eyebrows at Dean, who meanders so much (“Who _cares_ if the food is infused with truffle oil?”) and nags the waiter enough that eventually Sam just shuts his menu and says, “He’ll have _pici_ with mixed vegetables,”. The waiter nods, eager to get away from their table, but Dean stares at him for a long time after that, and it makes Sam’s heart beat a little too fast. He _knows,_ back in the States Dean would’ve grumbled, said something like “Not a fucking girl, Sam, think you got us mixed up,” but now he just seems... curious.

“You think we’ll make it out?”

“Of what?”

“This…” He waves a hand around. “Grand European showdown.” 

“We’ve survived everything else.” And that’s not entirely true, not entirely a lie, but Sam can’t bring himself to think that Dean is going to die, that there are some things even the Winchesters can’t beat. 

The conversation fades after that, and Sam stares absentmindedly at the cave walls, fiddling with his fork. The table is small, crammed into a nook like everything else on this continent, and he barely registers it when Dean reaches over and runs a finger over his wrist. 

“Hey,” He says, and Sam looks up, wondering if Dean can feel his pulse, if the charade’s finally up. He knows his gaze lingers a bit too long, knows he’s been slipping up for a while now, but some part of him just doesn’t care. They might die tomorrow, and if not Dean’s dying two months after that. Who cares if it’s wrong, either way Sam is going to lose his brother and he doesn’t know how to deal with that, has absolutely zero fucking clue. 

“Yeah?” He says, feeling like he's walking on ice. 

“You…” Dean locks their fingers together, something dark and unreadable in his eyes. “You wonder why we got sent here?”

Some part of Sam was expecting a confession, and he tamps it down ruthlessly. “I guess. Some part of me just thinks it was supernatural forces having a fun time fucking with us.”

“Probably,” Dean says, grinning slightly and shrugging in that way that tells Sam a lot more’s going on in his head than he’s letting on, and it infuriates Sam, makes him want to stab his fork into his goddamned tomatoes, but he knows better than to push it. 

The waiter’s taken away their plates by the time he finishes the thought, eyes gleaming in the candlelight. “Just feels like this whole time, we’ve had something to prove,” He says, looks away.

Sam can’t help himself. He leans forwards and grasps his brother’s hands in his own, pulling Dean forwards until their eyes meet. He wants… the same thing he’s wanted since he was thirteen; he wants Dean alive, alive and _his._

“We’ll see. Maybe…” He has no clue what he’s saying; his brain is a scrambled signal and he can barely breathe. Dean seems to catch on, and Sam is thinking, _this is it-_

“The bill,” The waiter says, and the moment collapses. Sam pays, because it was his idea, and tells himself he’s imagining the way Dean’s gaze lingers.

*

“All roads lead to Rome,” Sam declares, sitting up straight for once, a six dollar map of central Italy spread out on the dashboard. He tilts his head, picks up the map and announces, “South,” grinning.

Dean wonders when he started listening for Sam’s cues, started tuning himself to his words. His fingers twitch and he thinks that it must’ve been a while now, maybe forever, because he can’t remember a time when he didn’t.

There’s a complicated feeling unraveling in his chest, an age-old ache that he has no clue how to process. He pushes it down, ignoring how Sam is looking at him, ignoring this feeling in his chest that’s telling him to _drive,_ ignoring how his pulse is racketing up and he’s got no clue how to slow it down. 

“To us beating these motherfuckers,” He says, raising his cup of coffee and putting the car into gear, and Sam raises his cup (the most sugary latte Dean’s ever seen), clinks their mugs, and drinks. 

They follow the signs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is taken from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's _The Little Prince_. "One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes."
> 
> Marseilles was the place of the last outbreak of the bubonic plague in Europe, in 1720. It is estimated that around 200 000 people died during the outbreak. 
> 
> _Pain au chocolat, s’il te plaît?_ \- Chocolate croissant, please? [French]
> 
> Focaccia is a type of oily bread topped with vegetables, usually tomato or onion, and herbs. It is somewhat like the Northern Italian version of pizza. (Pizza itself is not actually very common in Italy when you get North of Rome.) 
> 
> Pici is a type of pasta native to Tuscany; it's basically a thicker version of spaghetti.


	8. as the romans do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The be-all-end-all.

_Rome, Lazio. The Republic of Italy._

*

Rome is glorious, and there is no other word for it. Opulent Baroque architecture in the same pavilion as ancient Roman designs, plazas with pizza shops and fountains and designer-brand stores, bronzed statues of heroes long gone. Sam collects tourist brochures like he _breathes,_ wishing that they could’ve come here for an actual vacation as he leafs through pictures of Saint Peter’s Basilica and the Colosseum and the Trevi Fountain. 

Dean keeps shooting him annoyed glances, _dude, I’ve got to_ drive, _Italians are fucking menaces on the road_ , but Sam is barely listening, window rolled down and tapping his foot to a miscellaneous beat. “Dude,” He says, over the wind and the traffic, "We're in _Rome._ "

"Thank you, Mr. Four-Years-In-University." 

Sam rolls his eyes, but his annoyance doesn't last long. Some part of him still doesn't believe that they're here - in Europe, in Italy, in Rome. Some part of him thought he would never leave America. Any cynicism seems pointless, if only for a moment, in the face of that. 

He looks out the windshield, to the plaza they've just reached, a panorama of hotels and restaurants and golden arches. He looks beside him, foot propped up on the car door, elbow on the window, and thinks, wonder of all wonders, he's here. Wonder of all wonders, Dean's with him.

Whatever happens next. 

There's this effervescent joy in his chest, joy and wanderlust, the type of feeling he only remembers from being very little, when he first saw New York, when he woke up in California, and he doesn't know quite how to tamp it down. He grins, the wind in his hair, and glances at Dean. 

He wonders if Dean ever had that sort of thing, maps pinned up on the wall, marked with _x_ s, lists of places he’d go. As long as Sam’s known his brother, he's been content with what he’s got; family, hunting, America. Dean never wants more than he already has, but he’s like a cornered cat when anyone tries to make him let go of things. (See: Sam trying to convince Dean that there may be value in getting a permanent job. See; Sam’s university applications, found in the mail two months prior to his departure, leading to one of the biggest blowouts of his life. See; Sam dying. The list goes on.)

But Dean’s been surprisingly fine, as far as Sam can tell. There’s nothing that says he feels like a rat in a cage, like he’s itching to leave. This is probably the closest thing they’ve ever had to a vacation, and it’s been...not half-bad, although he could have done with fewer monsters. Maybe a night at the Hilton, thrown in for good measure. 

They pick some hotel a few miles out from St. Peter's Basilica, the Tiber river flowing turquoise in the afternoon light, dappled golden tree leaves overhanging. Dean steals the first shower (jerk), so Sam sits on the balcony, the best room they could afford after absolutely failing to learn how to play a good hand of _Briscola._ The chair is creaky and the railing looks shaky, but the view is amazing and the weather is rivaled only by that of Southern California at the start of spring.

Sam's leafs through a copy of _Christ Stopped at Eboli_ that he found in a bookstore just outside the city. Italian, he’s found, is enough like Latin for him to be comprehensible, but different enough to be a slow read. 

He waits until the patter of water coming from the shower turns off, sits quietly as he listens to Dean picks through his clothes, humming Johnny Cash, _of travel I’ve had my share, I’ve been everywhere,_ and wondering at himself when he finds himself humming along. He waits as Dean flips on the Tv, grumbles to himself about Italian and its utter incomprehensibility, flips past a fashion channel and a sports game and a drama. He waits until Dean sighs, fumbles with the foil from the gas-station pizza they picked up two hours back.

Sam yells, “Hey, save one for me!” Because Italian gas station pizza is better than five-star restaurant American pizza.

“Yes, Samantha,” Dean says, and Sam rolls his eyes, flips his book closed, shuts his eyes and waits for Dean to walk out, the sound of his footsteps constant and steady. He walks up, flicks Sam behind the ear, and Sam grabs his wrist, flips it over and twists, worse than an Indian sunburn, and Dean goes down fast, kicks out his legs from under him and pulls him to the ground. Sam’s book falls from his hands and ends up on the floor somewhere, his shirt all bunched up and scuffed by the end of it, laughing like hell for some reason he can’t understand. He thinks about reaching out, pulling Dean down until they’re level and _kissing_ him, like he’s wanted to since he was thirteen. 

He realizes how they've landed - he’s straddling Dean, hands on his shoulders. All he’d have to do-

He doesn’t know what makes him do it. All he knows is that he kisses Dean, hard and fast and nothing like anything else he’s ever done before, and that it feels _right._ Sam has known something was wrong with him since he was thirteen, but this takes it to another level, and he can't bring himself to care. Dean goes strangely pliant when he touches him, letting Sam curl his fingers in Dean's hair.

Dean doesn't kiss him back, and it takes Sam a minute for him to be hit with how immensely he’s fucked up. Dean looks like he's been hit over the head, like someone sideswiped him, knocked him off-kilter and pulled the rug out from under his feet. 

“Christo,” He murmurs, eyes wide and lips parted. Sam doesn’t flinch as Dean runs through every exorcism in the book. He hands Sam a drink of holy water. “What did you do with my brother?” He asks, about seventy times, and Sam just smiles at him, grimly, downing the drink in one go.“Still here, Dean,” he says.

Sam thinks, maybe, he could write this off, put it up as a slip-up, but _no._ He’s not going to. Over a goddamned decade of this, and he’s sick of it, and Dean is going to _die_ and he doesn’t care. Not anymore. 

“It’s just me, Dean,” He hears himself say. “Always has been.” 

It’s probably true, anyways. 

*

Dean leaves. 

The street outside their hotel is crowded, like everything else in this goddamned continent, contingents of people moving like icebergs, old men on the side of the street playing cards, women dressed to the nines in stiletto heels, kids with melted gelato dripping onto their hands. The streets are winding and narrow, and for once he doesn’t fight it, walks along the Tiber until he gets lost, until his feet are aching and his stomach hurts. 

His hands are shaking and his heart is pounding and he doesn’t know what to _do._ He wanders until he finds the Colosseum, closed for holiday hours or something, giant arches and imposing architecture made by someone who clearly knew more about what on earth they were doing than he does. He passes Constantine’s arch, past a boulevard of rolling green fields littered with ruins. There are ruins in every corner of this city - it reminds him of Greece, passing by these old remnants with Sam. 

Sam. 

Fuck. He doesn’t want to think about Sam. He tries to think shout something, anything, else - the full lyrics and tracklist of _Master of Puppets,_ a ranked list of the best and worst pies he’s ever had, everything he misses and doesn’t miss about America - but every fucking memory is tainted, because it’s San manages to sneak into each and every one of them, because Sam has been a central figure his entire life, a character Dean just doesn’t fucking know how to write out. 

The whole thing feels like a dream - how Sam pinned his wrist, how soft his lips felt, how he kissed like it was life or death - and Dean has no clue how to reconcile it. Doesn’t know how to deal with the fact that _he didn’t push Sam away._ His whole body felt frozen, and the more he thinks about it - it wasn’t shock. 

He didn’t stop it. 

It’s _wrong._ Sam is his brother, his blood, someone he’s known his entire life, everything from his favorite meal to which monsters he hates the most to the essay he wrote that got him his scholarship to what he thinks of George Orwell’s _Homage to Catalonia_ and sometimes Dean hates him, so much he wants to punch walls, but most of the time Dean loves him, so fucking much, has no clue how to stop. Sam is this fucking enigma, who he knows like the back of his hand but doesn’t understand one bit, who left without an explanation and is fucking _brilliant_ and who had his whole life mapped out for him before Dean came and fucked it up, who could do so much better.

And Sam...wants him. 

He kicks a coffee cup across the street, streaks of foamed milk staining the cobblestones. “Fuck,” He mumbles under his breath, and keeps walking, barely processing where he’s going. He steps into a trattoria and gets a plate of fried zucchini flowers and a half slice of mushroom pizza (Sam likes mushrooms, ten years ago they were in Wyoming and- _fuck)._ He sits on a bench stool, and tries not to think. 

*

For a while Sam just stays there, paperback in his hands, looking at the wall, re-reading the same sentence over and over again. For a while he’s convinced that he’s never going to get up again; hell, Dean’s going to die soon anyways, and from the look of it the next two months aren’t gonna be much fun. The TV’s still on, so he sits on the floor and watches some comedy about some guy trying to hide the fact that he’s some sort of spy from some woman. He flips to the news and hears about a car crash, turns to a cooking channel and remembers that he might get hungry eventually. 

He turns off the TV, and stares blankly at his book. He thinks about calling Bobby, thinks about trying to find whatever final beast they’re supposed to be hunting down. Thinks about eating, thinks about having a coffee, thinks about dying. 

He leaves his phone in his pocket and gun in his jacket but decides on not using the latter just yet, getting up and walking to the first café he sees. It’s three in the afternoon, and the barista gives him a weird look when he orders a cappuccino, but he barely registers it, just sits outside and watches the street life go by, crowds of teenagers and men on motorcycles and people pulling driving stunts that, in America, would get you killed, arrested, or both. 

His coffee is bitter, practically tastes black, and Sam thinks of Dean, always insisting that milk and sugar were for wimps, even though Sam knew he used to make a face when he first started drinking it that way. He wonders where Dean went. Wonders if he’s left for good, if Sam has finally found the one boundary Dean wouldn’t cross, the one asterisk in his promise of _I would do anything for you._

He swallows hard. Wonder of all wonders, he’s managed to break the only constant thing in his life. He dials Dean’s number, and stares at it for a long, hard time. 

*

“...I know I fucked up, man. Just...don’t leave. Please.” Sam sounds like he did when Jess died, broken and incapable of putting himself back together.

Dean listens to the message three times, keys the number to save it for fourteen days. He waits a few hours, because he’s a coward.

*

“...’m at a church. Know you always liked churches. Never really got that.” A long pause, and Sam is still fiddling with his coffee, the wind swaying the canopy of the tree above his head. “...won’t leave you, Sammy. Don’t think I can. Wouldn’t want to, anyways.” 

“You should come here. You’d like it.” An address, a time, and Sam knows forgiveness when he sees it. 

He leaves his porcelain cup on the table, and sets off to find the church. 

*

The church is on an island, adjacent to the town but isolated amidst the river. Dean sits on one of the pews, trying not to remember. 

They’d spent a fair amount of time in churches as kids - easy places for Dad to dump them for a bit, a way to ingratiate themselves with townspeople usually suspicious of outsiders. Dean had never paid much attention in mass, mumbled his way through prayers and accepted communion when they were someplace Catholic, picked up the Bible and leafed through it until his eyes glazed over and he had to keep himself from falling asleep. 

In retrospect, he can remember Sam loving it, never once complaining about having to go, burying in nose in the Holy Book whenever they were somewhere without a library (Dean had tried to explain to him the value of 70s TV reruns, but he just hadn’t listened). He actually paid attention during service, and at some point Dean can remember him dragging his feet whenever the church was Catholic - Sam’s probably decided he’s Protestant, and wonders at how long it took him to notice. 

Seems like he missed a lot of things. 

He thinks it’s the sleep deprivation that’s making the frescos on the wall seem so lifelike. It’s already two in the morning, and Dean hasn’t slept for at least twenty-four hours. Can’t sleep, not really. Whenever he closes his eyes, all he can see is Sam saying, _It’s just me, Dean, always has been,_ or looking at him like he’s the axis the world revolves around, kissing him like he was going to die. 

Dean shakes his head and tells himself not to think about it.

The art is that typical martyrdom - Jesus on the cross, saints with nails in their hands, Mary with a halo. Angels and demons battling eternally. Life or death, good versus evil. That type of shit. 

Dean rubs his eyes. Religion’s never much been his game.

He doesn’t know why he told Sam to meet him here, other than it’s going to be open a few more hours and he thought that Sam might appreciate the frescos, might appreciate the compromise. He has no clue. He thinks he needs at least a few dead eye coffees to get him through the next few hours, thinks that he's hallucinating. 

The angels really do seem alive, though, and it's driving him nuts. He tries not to think about Sam, tries not to think about how badly everything's gone, how it always seems to go to shit with them. When it's not one thing, it's another. 

Someone sits down next to him, a girl with curly hair and thick eyelashes. She looks strangely familiar, and Dean shakes his head. It's been a day, and he knows things are bad when he starts screwing up on basic info.

She's holding a book in her hands, and when Dean passes an absentminded glance he realizes it's the Bible. Well. It is a church. 

He ignores her, can't even focus on a hot girl. If he goes ahead - goes to a bar, picks up a girl and goes home with her - he knows all he'll be able to think about is goddamn Sam, stuck on the thought of how Sam had kissed him and he hadn’t stopped him, in fact, he’d almost-

“Hi,” the girl says, and Dean wonders briefly if he’s wearing a sign that says _gringo_ or something because most Italians don’t start their conversations in English. 

He considers ignoring her, but instinct is instinct and Dean has never once turned down a conversation initiated by a pretty girl. “Hi,” He says, knowing he sounds distant. 

She considers him, blinking with wide eyes as she looks him over. She's twenty-something with a heart-shaped face. Her hand rests on the Bible, and Dean wonders if she’s going to try to lecture him, that maybe she’s some kind of religious nutter who wants to tell him how much better life gets when you accept Jesus into your heart. But she just regards him, looking him up and down. Her gaze is so far removed from the way girls usually consider Dean, something lascivious in their eyes, that Dean feels almost shocked. It feels like she’s not seeing him but seeing _through_ him, seeing more than just flesh and bone. 

She leans forwards a bit, pushing into his space so that her face is just a few inches from his. Dean thinks how, at any other time, he would be surprised but probably down for it, but now he’s just tired, now he just wants to be left alone and not think about it-

“You are different than I expected.”

“What?” Dean says, shocking out of his reverie, and trying to look at her, taking in the details; the curling golden marks around her ankles, the unnatural blue of her eyes, the way her hair gleams bright enough to be a halo. Supernatural, something unknown and from the looks of it out of his pay grade, and all he’s got is his Glock and its regular bullets. Fantastic. 

He remembers now, why she seemed familiar. When they left Hartville, she was the woman who he saw, hand outstretched to make a deal. _Jhudiel,_ he thinks. An actual angel. 

"I've been looking for you," He says, mostly to himself, clasping his hand around the handle of his gun. 

She's not harming him, not yet, just inching closer, a strange glow in her eyes. “Dean Winchester,” She says, and most of the time Dean is down for girls saying his name like she does, really, breathless and kind of like a prayer, but right now it’s just kind of creepy. “Altracea told me you would be a challenge, but I did not expect your soul to be so-” She gestures at him, as if he’s supposed to know what his soul looks like, “-lost.” 

“Well, yeah, gotta say, I am a tad confused,” He says, looking at her pointedly. “Most about who in the fuck you are, and what they _hell_ you want from me."

She frowns. “I feel no need to explain myself to you.”

“Alright then, we don’t have to talk,” Dean says, turning away from her, because he honestly doesn’t care if she kills people for fun, right now he just wants some fucking peace and quiet before he and Sam inevitably end up hashing it out and possibly never talking again. 

That apparently isn’t the right answer, because the girl’s eyes go flaming gold. “My name is Jhudiel,” She says, eyes gleaming. “I have been sent to find you and set things right.” 

Jhudiel, right. Sam mentioned some things about her earlier. Something about hard work or virtuosity or some shit. He was pretty sure that it was a guy, but he supposes some things get lost in translation. “Angels don’t exist.” He says. 

The girl turns over her hand, and lights a bright flame, gold and silver flames twining together above her fingertips. “Would you like me to prove it to you, Winchester?” She says, hint of a sneer in her voice, and Dean is a smart ass but he isn’t totally void of common sense; he shuts up.

“There are many ways I could,” she says, and Dean swears he can fucking _hear_ her thoughts. “Nope, I’m good, thanks so much, believe you a hundred percent.” He looks away, simultaneously guessing at how fast he can get the hell out of here and whether or not Sam will forgive him for ditching. 

Her lips twitch. “So funny,” She says, “But you won’t be laughing in a few months.” Her eyes go hard, something gleeful when she looks at him. 

Dean thought angels were supposed to be the _good_ guys, goddamnit. Figures that everything’s out to get you. 

There's a pause, and her voice goes gentle when she says, “Would you like me to fix your deal for you?” 

Dean glances at her, raises his eyebrows, and laughs. He doesn't even care to figure out how she knows. 

“Name your fucking price,” He says bitterly, because he only knows one and he’s not going to pay it. 

She doesn't hesitate. “Never talk to your brother again." 

Dean thinks for a second, and says, “No," because there's no other answer. 

She blinks, seeming taken aback. “But your brother - his soul-” 

“-Could be flayed to the fucking bone and rotten to the core and I wouldn’t care. Name your price, but Sam’s off the bargaining table.” 

She doesn’t seem to understand. “But you- it was destiny, it is written-”

“Where?” 

A puff of silver air and a book appears in her hands, old-fashioned script and Hebrew lettering. “It is written that you are a mirror, Winchester. A direct parallel to Cain and Abel.”

“What?”

She seems frustrated now, that he hasn’t understood what must be like basic math to her. “Some stories are told over and over again. This you must understand. Cinderella, the three blind mice, the hero’s journey - they are all recurring patterns.” 

She stands up, a woosh of golden air trailing behind her white dress and forming a tableau that looks like that Camuccini painting. “The end of empires, the fall of tyrants - humanity interprets them as stories, all of them. Myths, if you will. But they are not just stories, Winchester. They are inevitabilities.” 

He blinks, looking at the golden portrait of Caesar taking his last breath. “You’re saying that me and Sam...are destined?” He winces at the wording, “I mean, destined to?” 

She looks at him, and Dean could swear her eyes flicker red. “Destined to leave each other, or die because you choose not to."

“And what if I say no?”

“You can’t. It is inevitable.” 

Dean looks at her, this angel with God’s divine power invested in her, telling him he has to betray Sam or perish, and he thinks, _fuck that._

*

Sam is running like he hasn’t since he was fifteen and trying to escape the state of New Hampshire before either Dean or John noticed. He pounds the pavement, cobblestones flying out beneath his feet. He’s out of breath like he hasn’t been since he was eight, and the whole world is spinning. He’s lost, he’s so lost, he’s never going to find Dean and Dean will never forgive him, and the streets of Rome are winding and far too easy to get lost in, and he thinks of Baba Yaga again, _what everyone wants, Sam - a good story._ A good story doesn’t end with him getting lost, doesn’t end anticlimactically. In a good story, they shove the heartbreak right in your face. 

He finds the church, and he doesn’t even care that he busts the door in.

It’s completely empty, frescos and stained glass, martyrs and saints and demons and _Dean,_ a girl standing next to him. A girl who looks like she’s been lit up with a halo, a girl who looks like an angel, and Sam remembers, waking up in Nafplio; _I think I saw an angel._

“It is destiny that you betray your brother.” 

“I’m not going to say it again, lady. _No._ ” Sam feels this crushing relief, like someone’s taken the boot off of his chest; even after what he did Dean will still jump in front of a bullet for him, and Sam wonders what he did to deserve this, what he did to deserve any of this. 

The girl huffs, her hair flaring up in a crown around her. “And what if he betrays you?” 

Sam hates that Dean’s voice wavers as he says, “He wouldn’t.” his brother pauses, swallows. “He’s got nothing to betray me for, unless you can turn back time.” 

“No, but I can bring back the dead.” The girl snaps her fingers, and from out of the golden mist comes a figure. 

_Jess,_ not gold and silver but simply as she was, as beautiful as she was the day she died, her eyes animated and lively. “...Where am I?” She says, voice trembling, and Sam has to keep himself from reaching out. 

He clenches his hands into fists, forces himself to breathe, and chews over his words. He closes his eyes, tilts his head down. 

“I won’t do it,” he whispers, but it reverberates through the church loud and clear. When he opens his eyes, both Dean and the angel are openly staring at him. He forces himself to step forwards, to walk into the light, face down the mirage of the girl he loved more than life itself. He thinks about the life they could've had, how she made him smile. 

“I loved you,” He tells her. “I always will, but.” _but._ That was always the problem. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, to Jess and Dean and to himself, three years ago; _I’m sorry I couldn’t do it. Sorry I can’t take the life I know you would have killed for when it's right in front of me. Sorry I failed everyone, over and over. I’m sorry I didn’t love you enough, I’m sorry I loved you too much._

He doesn’t feel his knees hit the floor, but he knows the world goes black. 

*

Jhudiel snaps her fingers, Sam crumples to the floor, and Dean pulls out his gun. Jhudiel pays him no attention, waving Jess away and looking at Sam. Then she looks at Dean. 

Then she laughs. It’s not a happy laugh; she sounds surprised and bitter and hopeless all wrapped into one, and her eyes are glittering when she turns to look at Dean, be it with fear or sadness or something Dean can’t even read. 

“Altracea was wrong,” She murmurs. " _I_ was wrong," She says, in amazement, turning her gaze to Dean. 

“You proved us wrong. Both of you,” she looks down, to where Dean has been on the floor checking Dean’s pulse, and she shakes her head in amazement. “I, I failed. Altracea failed.” 

“We all do it sometimes,” Dean says, sighing in relief when he checks Sam’s wrist and finds his pulse beating, and that his brother is still breathing. “You’d be surprised.” Sam’s probably just passed out, not going to have much head trauma or a concussion or anything.

“Not angels,” Jhudiel tells him, “Not destiny.” She pauses, still seeming lost. " _We both lost the bet,_ " She says, and laughs a bit, like there's something stuck in her throat. 

“Did you spell him?” he says, and she’s so out of it that she just replies, “No,” dazedly. Good. Sam’ll be fine, probably wake up in a few hours. Dean can take him back to the hotel, and after that they’ll-

After that they’ll have to deal with the fact that Sam kissed Dean, and Dean didn’t stop him, and given the choice between anything else in the world and each other they chose each other. 

On second thought, maybe he’ll indulge the angel. He stands up, straightening his shirt. “Why did you want us to hurt each other, anyway?” 

She pauses, shrugs. “It simply _is,_ Winchester. You and your brother - are destined to either betray each other or leave each other. Me and Altracea- had our cards on different options, so to say, but what you did - neither of us foresaw it." She shakes her head. "You cannot defy destiny. No individual can hold such power. There is no force powerful enough.” She pauses. “But you _did._ ” 

Dean feels himself grin, just a bit. “I don’t know, lady. I feel pretty ordinary.” because at the end of the day; yes, Dean hunts monsters and runs credit card scams for a living, but he also failed his grade 11 chemistry exam and can’t stand peach pie and has made a hobby of fixing up his car. He doesn’t have superpowers and he doesn’t want them, he misses his dead parents, and he loves his brother, maybe more than he should. But he’s not special. He’s just..a guy, who life put in weird circumstances, and he dealt with it. That’s really all there is. 

He thinks, maybe, that it’s not about destiny. For him or for anyone. He thinks that it’s about doing what you want to do, loving who you want to love, being who you want to be. All that God and fate stuff - that’s just the shit they throw in to make sense of it all.

And destiny? That shit's up in the air. Your life is _your_ choice, not the big guy in the sky or the fates. Your mistakes are yours to make, and your successes are your to celebrate. He thinks about everything he's done in his life, the people he's saved and the places he's seen and the people he's loved. He can't say that he's lived without regret, but he _can_ say that it's been worth it. 

The angel looks at him like he’s from Mars, and he shrugs. “Don’t look at me, lady. This is what I do,” he doesn’t know what he means by this, but he’ll figure it out - he’s Dean Winchester, he kills monsters and he saves people and he loves his family, or whatever’s left of it. The rest comes after.

The angel looks at him for a long time. Something in her eyes shifts, going from piercingly cold blue to a lighter, gentler shade. 

“Maybe,” She says. “Just maybe.” 

She snaps her fingers, and Dean thinks, _home._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title (as well as the fic title) is taken from the saying "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." You can read about the history of the saying [here](https://theculturetrip.com/europe/italy/articles/the-origin-of-the-saying-when-in-rome-do-as-the-romans-do/).
> 
> The Tiber is the principal river that runs through Rome. 
> 
> Briscola is one of Italy's most popular card games, along with Scopa and Tressette. 
> 
> _Christ Stopped at Eboli_ is one of the most iconic pieces of literary work to come out of Italy in the 20th century. It is a memoir written by Carlo Levi, a doctor who was excited to a small village in Basilicata in Southern Italy. The book is known for its observation of the people's way of life at the time, and the way it showed how isolated those parts of Italy were. 
> 
> In Italy, cappuccinos are generally considered a morning drink, not to be had in the afternoon.


	9. i have but one life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where the heart is.

Hartville, Wyoming. The United States of America.

*

Sam wakes up with a killer headache. Everything hurts, from his legs to his hands to the back of his eyeballs, and the whole world is disorientingly bright. 

What the- he pushes off of the ground, steadying himself with a hand on a chalky rock ledge and dusting himself off. Above him is open sky, but around him there's a wide pit, like an abandoned mine. 

Wait. 

"Dean!" He yells as loud as he can, and glances down. Oh," he says, looking down and seeing his brother rubbing his eyes, glaring blearily at him. "Right here, Sam," Dean says, and Sam thinks that, any other time, it would've been followed up with an array of sarcastic commentary. As it is, Dean sounds almost fond, and Sam starts to smile. 

Then it all comes rushing back to him; Dean's deal, Europe, destiny, how immensely he's fucked up. The smile drops right off of his face. 

Dean must notice. "Hey," he says, pushing up off the ground. "It's-"

Whatever he was about to say dies in his throat at the sweep of mist that comes over them. "What the-" Sam starts, and Dean groans. "Goddamnit. Not again."

A woman appears out of the shadows, wearing a red dress and a long cloak. "Winchesters," she says, sounding displeased. 

He's pretty sure Dean facepalms. "Not more of this shit," he whines. "Please, I'm so sick of everyone mysteriously knowing our destiny. Can we go back to shooting things?" 

The lady ignores him, sitting down on a rock. They’re - somewhere in what looks like a mine, the shallow sort of dig they had back in the late 1800s, sort of like that one in Hartville. 

Wait. 

“We’re home,” he says, and turns to Dean in amazement, a smile starting at the edges of his lips. “We’re home!” He repeats, just to hear the words again, because it’s been years since Sam had anything he could call home and maybe absence really does make the heart grow fonder. 

He’s so caught up in his realization he barely notices the woman in red until she clears her throat, and the excitement falls by the wayside, replaced with caution. He taps his pocket, relieved to find that once again he still has at least some of his stuff, including his gun. 

Dean’s faster than him. “Who are you?” he says to the woman, a sharp note to his voice. 

She smiles. “Altracea. I believe you boys have heard of me.” 

Dean pulls out his gun. “Fucking bitch,” He says, and shoots her. It hits her straight in the head, and the skin around the bullet hole ripples and begins repairing itself. Dean shrugs, glancing at Sam. “Worth a try.” 

Altracea’s lips flatten into a displeased line before she pulls herself back together, composing herself. “I suppose I should have expected that,” she says, brushing off the now-normal space where the bullet hit her. 

“You think rock salt’ll work? She seems like a demon. Do we have anything to set up a-”

“I’m not a demon.” 

Dean rolls his eyes. “Okay, find me something powerful enough to teleport people across continents that isn’t a demon. Or an angel,” he adds, tilting his head. 

She pauses, looking strangely hurt. “I’m not one of them. ” 

“You’re not a demon?” Dean says, unimpressed. 

“...Sort of.” 

“How can you be ‘sort of’ a demon?” Dean says, with air quotations. 

She pauses, seeking to regain some of her earlier swagger as she looks Dean in the eyes, pushing her cloak back. “I don’t make deals the way my... brethren do.” She hisses at brethren, and Sam thinks, there’s got to be a story there. 

He cuts in before Dean can piss her off even more. “What do you mean?” 

She looks away. “Not a story you are in need of knowing, Winchester.”

“So what do you do then, if not the normal demon deals?” He can feel Dean’s gaze drilling into the side of his head; he ignores it. 

Shadows flicker on the rocks; Altracea opens her hands and creates a bundle of light. “I give people a chance,” she says. 

“A chance?”

“To improve themselves. To become better people. If they do, I reward them. If not-” She shrugs.

“-You kill them.” Dean finishes off, looking around for something to use as a weapon, giving Sam a look that says this chick is clearly nuts . 

She shrugs. “They make the deal. And we can offer great rewards." 

“Woah, hold up,” Sam says. “You didn’t offer us a deal, you just-” he gestures with his hand, “-us off across the Atlantic.” 

“You two were a special case.” 

“Whaddya mean?” Sam is surprised at the curiosity in Dean’s voice. 

She looks at him, appraising. “I have never seen two people so horrifyingly codependent in my life,” Dean rolls his eyes; Sam’s heart beats so hard he can hear his blood pounding. “You are famous among the supernatural world, and all of your escapes have...interested me greatly. There is a great deal written about you in prophecies, and the angels have a specific resolution in your destinies,” Sam’s pretty sure he hears Dean mutter ‘still can’t believe there’s fucking angels that want to kill us, too,’. 

“Jhudiel and I took a joint interest in your cases," She says. "We made a - bit of a wager, I suppose. She wanted to see your destinies fulfilled - that you would come to betray each other after your relationship took too much stress. I thought," She pauses, "-that you would simply separate amicably. Jhudiel is...insistent, however, the deals be made in her territory, so I arranged that you be sent to her continent. It required some bargaining to get you boys somewhere other than Italy, but it was required. I had contacts in other parts of the continent."

Sam thinks about baba Yaga, saying Altracea was always a bit too altruistic for my taste, thinks of the knowing gleam in her eyes. 

“All of the books say you two are destined to leave or betray each other-” Her gaze sweeps over them, and Sam feels uncomfortably bare, “But none say which. I wanted to see... if I could push you two away from each other. If I could make you become better people, I might be able to reward you." Her eyes gleam, and Sam shifts uncomfortably. 

“Nothing I’d want from you, lady,” Dean bitches, rolling his eyes. Altracea pauses. 

“Are you saying you want to go to Hell?” 

Sam’s gaze snaps up. “What?”

She shrugs. “As a rogue agent, I have won more than a few fights with my brethren. Safe to say, I have a bit of a...reputation. And I’m not afraid to call in favors.” 

“...You can save Dean.” Sam finishes for her, feeling breathless. 

“Yes.” 

“And you would’ve, if we’d betrayed each other.” 

“Yes.” 

Sam glances at Dean, quickly, trying to judge. Deans’ got this hard set to his jaw, and Sam wonders what it means. 

Dean puts the pieces together faster than he does, sighing as he says. “And now, instead, you’re going to kill us. Right? That’s how these things go.” 

Altracea pauses. “Not quite.” 

*

The not-exactly-a-demon-apparently chick is walking towards them, and Dean immediately goes for his gun, although he knows it’s useless. He’s pretty sure this is the end, or an addendum to it; maybe she wants to torture them a bit before killing them. Sounds like demon style. He looks around for stuff to use; there’s really just rocks, rocks and a rusted pick lying on the floor that looks like it would fall apart when you swung it. 

He thinks of all the shit he didn’t get to do, of all the stuff he’s never going to see again. Thinks that if they’d been just a bit smarter, a bit less distracted, a bit less put off by dead girls with big dreams and small-town style Americana and this weird thing between him and Sam, then maybe they would have been better prepared, maybe they could have ganked this bitch and gotten away with it. 

He thinks about Mom, about Dad. Thinks about all the things he’s killed and the people he’s saved, thinks about his deal and how he’s probably going to Hell regardless. He thinks about Sam, and he thinks I loved you more than anything, and then he thinks that it’s really fucking shitty to have an epic realization of love hit you right when you’re about to die, when your throat is so closed up with fear that you can’t even say it. 

He looks at Sam, and god damn him, he smiles. 

Altracea picks up the pick, walks over, and-

*

“Dean Winchester, I free you of your deal.” A shining white light flickers down the pick, shimmering around Dean before evaporating. 

She turns to Sam, and Sam has no clue what to say. “What- is that - was that real?” Because it can’t be, Winchester motto; if it’s too good to be true, it definitely is. 

She shrugs. “You’ll have to take my word, Sam, and see.” 

“But - we failed your test.” 

“No,” She says, girnning. “You succeeded.”

“What?” He says, resisting the urge to run over and check on Dean, who’s looking dazed but otherwise fine. 

“You proved me wrong, Sam.” She says, eyes gleaming the same silver as the pick was just a few seconds ago. “You defied destiny, and you became better people because of it.” 

Sam thinks about arguing, because he and Dean are a hot mess if there ever was one, but her eyes are shining with happiness and he doesn’t want to die, so he keeps his mouth shut. And maybe...maybe she has a point. The last few weeks have been nuts, but they've...they've gotten better at talking things out, and they actually took a vacation, sort of, and Sam thinks that he saw some of the best days of his life and some of the most interesting places. 

He’s stunned. “Thank you,” he manages to whisper. “It was...a good trip, actually. Are you..letting us go?” He doesn't want to hope, but. He always does. 

“One more thing,” She says, reaching out a hand. A bright ball of light dances over her palm, the same light that she hit Dean with. She closes her hand into a fist, and the light solidifies, falls into her palm as a seashell-shaped charm about the size of a quarter. 

“One wish,” She smiles. “Of your choosing. I wouldn’t want to create any more destiny for you two. Jhudiel says you're welcome,” She winks, like it's an inside joke, although Sam doesn't get it. 

Sam palms the charm; it’s heavy and weighted like actual silver, shimmering in the cave’s low light. “Thank yo-” He starts to say, but she’s gone. 

*

Hartville is a welcome sight after a month of nothing but Europe. Dean almost cries when they step into a Dunkin’ Donuts. “The jelly, Sam, I missed the goddamned jelly,” he says.

“You know that shit’s terrible for you, right?” 

“Yeah, duh, that’s why it’s great,” Dean says, licks his lips of powder and doesn’t miss the way that Sam’s eyes linger. He stares his brother right back, and grins. 

Then he smears Sam's face with icing powder, because what the hell, they’ve got time. 

He thinks it’s Sam who has jetlag this time, constantly waking up at the wrong times and bitching about the coffee. “If nothing else,” he says, “The Italians knew their cappuccinos.” 

“Stop being a wimp Sam, it’s got fucking cream in it, what do you want, ” Dean says, jabbing a thumb at the seventy-cent drip coffee he ordered, no sugar, because he wanted to piss Sam off. 

Sam just makes a face and drinks it, rolling his eyes. God, Dean missed this. He wants to hug the whole fucking country of America, fall to his knees and sing the Star-Spangled Banner, yell In God We Trust at the top of his lungs from a rooftop, because the coffee may be shit and the food may be horrible for you but he’s home, goddamnit, where he’s spent his whole life, the country he knows and loves and missed like it was a part of him. 

They eat at McDonald's, and Dean is ecstatic. “They have McDonald's in Europe, you know,” Sam informs him. “Not the same,” Dean says back, and even Sam has to concede on that. 

He actually does fall to his knees when he sees the Impala in all her glory, still at the same corner they left her over a month ago, completely unharmed. “God bless small-town Americans for not knowing a car worth stealing when they see it,” Dean says, rubbing a hand on her paint job (unscraped, thank god), and Sam says, “Do you two need a moment,” sardonically. 

He looks at his car, and he looks at his brother, and he looks at the open wide road in front of them, thinks of pie shops and gas stops and cornfields. He smiles so wide his mouth hurts. Then he turns to Sam, and grabs him by the collar. 

“No,” he says, “I’m open to sharing,” And then he kisses him. 

It’s not a great kiss - Sam is shocked and his eyes go wide, he almost runs away even though his heart is jackhammering under Dean’s palm. It’s weird and kind of awkward and one of the strangest things he’s ever done in his life, but it’s Sam and Dean loves him and he’s so happy he doesn’t even fucking care. 

God fucking damn it, Dean loves his life. 

* 

Sam is waiting for the ball to drop, for Dean to snap out of it and realize that they’re brothers, give Sam the big fucking speech about right from wrong and lines you don’t cross. But he doesn’t, just collapses into the motel bed and grins. 

Sam pauses at the edge of the bed. “You got a king,” he says. Single bed or no, it’ll be better than what they had in Europe: the beds there are singular and not half the size of this. But some part of him can’t quite believe it, that Dean would choose him, after this, after everything. 

“That I did, Sammy.” Dean looks up, sees Sam’s expression, and his smile falters. “...Is that a problem?” 

Sam shakes his head, sitting down. “No, I’m just...surprised. I didn’t think…” He looks away, uncertain of how to finish that sentence. 

“Sam,” Dean says, grabbing his hand. “I’m gonna say this once, and then we are never talking about this again. K?” Sam nods mutely, but there's a gleam in his eyes, like he's thinking he could get Dean to say it again if he wanted him to, and Dean's loathe to admit it but he's probably right.

Doesn't change the fact that; “I love you more than I will ever love anyone else in this world. Nothing will change that. This-” he gestures to the bed, to their mixed up clothing, to them “-I don’t know about this, really, but I know I don’t want to fuck it up, okay? You matter, Sam, more than destiny and angels or any of that shit. So… if you don’t want to, or you wanna stop, or you want to leave,” His voice breaks a bit, “You gotta tell me. I’m gonna try my best, Sam, but you know my best isn’t always enough,” He chokes up a bit on that last word, and Sam thinks back to when they were kids, when he used to ask why they only ever had cheap mac and cheese and burgers for dinner, and Dean just looked at him sadly, and told him that he'd try for steak next week. 

“No, Dean, you’ve always been enough,” he fists his hand in Dean’s shirt, struck with this sudden desire to make him understand. Dean must see it in his eyes, because he relaxes, the tension leaving his shoulders. “I...me too, man. The same. I love y- I love you so much, and you gotta tell me when I fuck up, because, you know, we’ve got a good track record like that,” he says. Dean laughs, pulls him down to bed, and Sam gets the feeling that everything’s going to be just fine. 

*

Dean gets behind the wheel the next day, the engine roaring to life. “I missed you too, baby, I missed you too,” he coos, and Sam rolls his eyes. “Jealous already, Sammy?” Dean says, and Sam snorts. “You wish."

“Time to get the fuck out of Dodge,” Dean says and revs the engine, because he doesn’t think they can kill Altracea if they try - Sam looked it up yesterday, and finished shrugging. “She saved your life, Dean. I think we might owe her one,” Dea acquiesced, although it still doesn’t sit exactly right with him. But there are worse monsters out there, who are far less fair. If people want to gamble on themselves, he supposes they have a right to try their hand. 

Dean, however, is never making another fucking deal in his life. 

“Where do you wanna go?” Dean says, turning the key to the ignition, looking at Sam. 

Sam smiles. “I was thinking New Orleans, actually,” he says, and Dean grins. 

“You got it,” he says, and floors the gas. 

*

“You going to do anything with that?” Dean says, halfway through Oklahoma, rolling fields and foothills and corn crops. Sam’s fingering the seashell charm, thinking of all the wishes he used to have. I wish were normal. Wish I had superpowers to fight the monsters. Wish Dean and Dad were immortal. 

He shrugs. “Not sure,” not because he doesn’t believe it'll work - they’ve taken their fair share of detour routes, two months have passed and nothing’s happen, no hellhounds and no demons and no eternal torture - but because there’s nothing he can say with certainty that he really wants, right now. Maybe some peanut M&Ms, but he doesn’t need a wish for that. 

“Anything you want that you can’t have?” he says, and Dean shrugs. “Nah, not really."

“Maybe we should bring mom back, or dad.” 

“Would that reverse Dad’s deal?”

“Don’t know.”

“You think they’d wanna come back?”

“...Don’t know.” 

“You think they’d…” find out about us, goes unspoken. Sam shrugs. Doesn’t matter too much to him; if mom and dad wanted a say in how he ran his life then they should’ve stuck around, shouldn’t have fucking died on him or raised him with no one but Dean to trust, but he knows it’s different for Dean.

“We can think on it,” he says, and Dean nods.

“Maybe we should become immortal, you know,” Dean says, twelve-mile markers later, out of the blue. “Just do this forever.”

“Don’t you think we’d get bored?” 

“Maybe. But then we could, like, set up shop somewhere, open a bakery or something. Move to Mexico. Y’know. See how this whole story-” He waves, at them, at the road, at America, "-Turns out,” He says, and grins, looking off into the horizon. 

“Yeah,” Sam says noncommittally. It’ll come up later, be subject to rounds and rounds of debate, and in the end maybe they’ll just chuck it, who knows. They’ve been subject to enough fucking magic already. “Maybe we could just wish for higher powers to stop fucking up our lives,”

“Could get a bit boring,” Dean says, and Sam concedes that at this point they probably are adrenaline junkies, and they’d end up getting their hits from gambling or doping or something. 

They’re at a truck stop in Louisiana, Dean flipping through the papers, when Sam realizes something. “Hey, Dean,” He says, and Dean says, “Yeah?” glancing up at him. 

“We should do that again.” 

“Do what?”

“The whole crazy vacation road trip thing,” He says, and before Dean can call him fucking insane, adds on, “C’mon, admit it, you had fun too.”

Dean considers, like he’s thinking back to those shitty roads and winding streets and odd food and interesting people and crazy drivers and ancient cities, and he looks at Sam, all thoughtful, and he says, “Yeah, you know, it was almost like a vacation.” 

Sam laughs, and Dean says, “Fuck it, let’s do it. But give it a year or two,” he says, and Sam nods, because he gets it. The sun is burning bright and beautiful and his M&Ms are melting in his hands, and he’s missed home like a phantom limb, the bright roads and the gorgeous deserts and the coast-to-coast countryside, the imposing mountains and shimmering lakes, the high skyscrapers of the big cities and cheap big box stores and crappy motel stops. He thinks that honestly, he could spend his whole life here and be happy; either way, he’s good. 

“Yeah, it can wait,” he agrees, because; what the hell? They’ve got time.

He smiles, the sun making everything ten times brighter, and Dean smiles back. 

They get in the car, and drive. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is taken from Nathan Hale. "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country," were his last words before he was killed by the British for being a spy during the Revolutionary War.


End file.
